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STATE RIGHTS 



PHOTOGRAPH FROM THE RUINS 



ANCIENT GREECE. 



PROF. TAYLER LE\VIS, LL. D. 



God requireth that which is past.— Ecclesiastes, iii, 15. 






ALBANY : 

WEED, PARSONS & COMPANY, PRINTERS. 
1864. 



^ 



^ 



"^ PREFACE 



This little book is written for all loyal and thinking men, whose 
minds are intent upon the preservation of the American nationality. 
They will see the application of the parallel, whatever they may think 
of the manner in which it is now presented. One merit, however, the 
writer would claim for the brief picture he here offers to the public. 
It is strictly true. It is not overdone. It cannot be overdone. If it 
fails, it is no falling short of the reality of that state of things which 
we have called a political hell. There is one thing that prevents this 
from being realized, as it ought to be, even by scholars. We are so 
much occupied with the poetry, the philosophy, the fair literature of 
Greece, that we neglect the details of her minute poHtical history, and 
so form a very inadequate view of its political horrors. The aim of 
the writer has been to show this latter feature truthfully, and at the 
same time, graphically, by selecting those points of the old Greek 
political life, in which it so marvelously resembles our own. The 
more he studied it, the more he was struck with the perfection of the 
parallel. If there is something which has the appearance of repetition 
in setting it forth, it is to keep vividly before the mind the one idea 
of the book. Autonomy was the bane of Greece ; the doctrine of 
*' state rights" and " state sovereignties," has been, and is yet, the 
rock of danger to the American Nationality. This idea is never lost 
sight of. In every seeming digression it is still remembered, and 
other topics are treated only to make the return to it more clear 
and effective. God has given us a mirror in the past. Let us not be 
like " him who beholds his natural face in the glass, then goeth away, 
and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was." 

In the history of Greece we have a guide book for almost every 
step we may take. God grant that this brief effort to call attention 
to it, may be of some avail in this most trying crisis of our American 
nationality. 

Schenectady, Sept. 16, 1864. 



STATE RIGHTS. 



The saddest book in the world is Grote's History of Greece. 
Yet sad as it is, there is no one for us more instructive. We 
often hear our government spoken of as a great experiment. 
Nothing like it was ever known before. We have been accus- 
tomed, too. to regard it as something lying altogether out of the 
usual track of history. All references to the ancient republics 
have been despised as pedantic and irrelevant. Christianity 
made a difference. Men were continually saying this whose 
Christianity did not excel, and whose ordinary moral and poli- 
tical virtue fell below ihat of Pericles and Thucydides, very far 
below that of Arislides and Socrates. And then again, there 
was that magic word *' representation," as though a stream 
could rise above its fountain, or any outward change of mode 
could produce a change in human nature, or make the repre- 
sentative to be in the long run, anything higher, or better, or 
more intelligent than the represented. For all government is 
representation in some form, and to fancy for ourselves any 
peculiar defense here was but to cheat ourselves with a word, 
and all the mischiefs it might occasion when it came to be, as 
all such words in time most certainly will, mere political cant. 

A more complete exemplar cannot be found for us than is 
presented in the States of Greece. Look at her map. How 
beautifully unique the territory, as though it had been expressly 
formed for one great nation, composed of people speaking one 
common language, having one common origin, one common 
heroic age, one common storehouse of tribal and national remi- 
niscences ! " When the Most High separated the sons of Adam, 
when he gave the nations their inheritance," here was the home 
for the sons of Javan, even as Canaan was destined for the sons 
of Israel. A glance at the map shows that here was the seat of 
beneficent empire J and such it would have been had not the 
petty depravity, the selfish, short judging jealousy of man, 
thwarted, as it sometimes is permitted to thwart, the divine 
arrangements in nature and creation. This map of Greece is 



of itst'lf a beautiful spectacle for the eye ; how much higher 
rises its conceptual beauty when we contemplate it as°the 
destined seat of one indivisible political whole, though so mourn- 
fully failing in the historical realization of the idea^ 

Our own map, no Ic'^s than that of Greece, suggests the 
thought of one peopU', and one nationality. Separate sove- 
reign powers could not exist fherc, they cannot exist here, with- 
out everlasting wars. This was proved in our case, a century 
ago, when the country in contention was a wilderness. Eng- 
land h;id the coasts; France was creeping in at the West. But 
even then it was seen, that this unique territory between the 
Lakes, the Atlantic, the Gulf, and the Mississippi, could not 
bear two sovereignties; and that snme consistent nation that 
sees no sulhcient leason in our strujigle for unity, now that this 
territory is the abode of thirty millions, then fought nine years, 
and all round the globe, for the siime object, when its interior 
wa3 all an unknown waste. ]iut there was one aspect in which 
our map pleads stronger still for nationality than that of Greece. 
"The outward boundaries of both are most natural, unsurpassed, 
in this respect, by any presented in the world's geography. But 
in Greece the inward divisions also, though absolutely and re- 
latively too small for nationalities, were almost wholly natural, 
or the result of pure historical causes. The Sons of Javan went 
forth, like the northmen, with no other patent than their own 
free roving will, and that section of the Great Charter (Gen. x, 
5), which allotted to them the Land of the West and the "Isles 
of the Sea." Their settlements were the offspring of no trading 
companies, or Duke of York patents, or mining grants; they had 
DO Mason and Dixon lines; and so their boundaries were the 
valleys, and river basins, and separate winding bays, in which 
they settled. There was something in this which might palliate, 
though not excuse, those local jealousies which ever prevented 
their being one great people. We have no such plea. Our in- 
ternal divisions, on the other hand, are, of all things, the most 
unnatural in position, as they are mainly arbitrary in their his- 
tory. To any intelligent mind, the b ire map presents a stronger 
argument against "state ri.-h's" and "state sovereignties," than 
volumes of abstract reasoning. One steady look is enough to 
dissipate all tlie sophistries of Calhoun. What a contrast be- 
tween the exterior and the interior, between the wliole and the 
parts! Wil/iout and around, how perfectly natural and unique 
the bounds by which God has made us geographically one 
people! Wijliin and bcfwccn, how utterly different, how di- 
rectly opposite, we may say, the lines thai separate tliese 
strange 'state sovereignties!"' There is hardly a natural 
boundary between them. The Ohio, to a partial extent, 
the Potomac, and the Connecticut, between two or three 



divisions, and that is all. Our state lines are, in the main, 
as artificial as county lines, or the ward lines in our cities. 
They are, for the most part, surveyors' courses, running 
straight on across mountains, rivers, valleys, prairies, and 
every thing else that comes in their way. And so these 
states themselves, were, for the most part, land patents, 
grants made to individuals, or corporations — neither grant- 
ors nor grantees knowing anything about the real geogra- 
phy of the country. They were ''sovereignties" made on 
paper in scriveners' shops. It was matter wholly of conjecture 
what such grants might contain. In some, the lines ran to the 
South Sea, wherever that might be. One line of the Virginia 
patent, as first given, ran indefinitely due northwest, a course 
which, unless stopped somewhere, would make an everlasting 
spiral round the north pole. These lines had little or nothing 
historical about them ; and by this we mean that they were 
determined much oftener by purely private, than by political or 
public reasons. A land speculation in England, or Holland, 
varying this way or that, would have made them wholly differ- 
ent. A mistake of a scrivener in a bearing, or a distance, would 
have altogether changed the value and the dignity of these 
mighty sovereignties. That geographical whole, on the other 
hand, which the higher movements of history were filling up, 
and bringing out, was but little affected by such unhistorical 
causes as these. It had its birth and its progress, its shaping 
unity, and its national consummation, in the great movements of 
God and history — movements even more unique, more visibly 
revealing the hand of the Great Mover, than any that made the 
nationalities of Rome or Britain. 

These internal state boundaries of ours point to hardly any- 
thing beyond the merest arbitrary and accidental interests. Even 
the New England states, the most historical of them all, have 
hardly any history, worth calling such, except as they make one 
peculiar whole. But elsewhere the state boundaries are still 
more unmeaning and accidental. Especially is it so with those 
of them that are the tnere creatures of congressional enactment. 
Look at these lines as straight as the compass can make them, 
these parallelograms, these rhomboids and trapezoids, these bear- 
ings due west, due north, these parallels of latitude, these merid- 
ianal protractions, and then ask history whether ever before, in 
any part of the world, " sovereign states had been ever thus di- 
vided, or could keep thus divided V How would the map of Greece 
look if cut up in this manner? Let us suppose that from some 
arbitrary force, Europe had been thus dissected into squares and 
parallelograms a thousand years ago. How long would it have 
remained in that singular condition ? In less than half a century 
would it have broken up, and nature and history have had their 



way again. Such lines may stand when they serve the purposes 
of municipal arrangement; they may be very convenient when 
there is an all encircling national whole, a true historical unity 
keeping tliem together, lii^e the old British imperium, or the 
true American nationality that immediately took its place. It is 
the great arch supporting rather than supported, tliat holds last 
all below. Take this away and all security lor permanence is 
gone. Or to speak without a metaphor, the nation is dissolved. 
It is easy to conceive it. Remove this great embracing whole, 
this strong historical band, and how long will the inward arti- 
ficial lines that represent nothing more historical thrm grants to 
English Dukes, and soulless corporations, preserve that sacrcd- 
ncss with which the superficial declaimer would seek to cloth 
them? State lines are sacred things say they; they mark the 
old Dominion, they are historical monuments of the ancient com- 
monwealth of Carolina. The Union, on the other hand, is but 
a piece of conventional patchwork ; there is nothing sacred 
about it; it is no true nationality. A large organ of veneration, 
indeed, must they possess who can take in such a view as this. 
To come back to sober truth, what is there historical about 
South Carolina that any man should love her on that account, 
or indulge in such heroics as have been ever found in her inflated 
oratory? Who re;ids her history now? what is there in it to 
induce a man to read it? what will the world care about it 
when South Carolina, by her severance from the great historic 
Dationality, shall have utterly lost what little dignity she may 
have once possessed as a member of it? 

But there are thoughts here that will come in better in another 
place. Return we to the map of Greece, and to the more direct 
comparison we wish to make between her history and our own. 
Observe that graceful outline, and the completeness of the Hel- 
lenic territory that is embraced by it. How compactly it lies 
between the iEgean and Ionian seas! Study the beautiful pro- 
portion of its northern and southern tracts, apparently divided, 
yet most intimately united, by the interflowing gulf of Corinth. 
It made, or should have made, Pelopoimesus one with iEtolia and 
BcEotia, even as the Ohio joins in closest union Kentucky and 
Indiana — in both cases the internal division, when it is a natu- 
ral one, stretigtheniiig the outside all-embracing bond. That 
fair gulf of Corinth, so made by God for friendly intercourse 
and peaceful commerce between the sections of one great na- 
tionality, how many fierce naval combats did it witness, not in 
defense of Greece against a foreign foe, but all for " State rights," 
that everlasting bane of Grecian welfare. It makes us think of 
the Mississippi, and of the blood, that for the same accursed 
reasoD, is now staining its waters. 



Such was the map of Greece continental, with its commerce 
inviting coasts, its winding^ bays, its interpenetrating rivers, 
whilst circling round, in glad profusion, lay those many "isles of 
the sea," which, in Scripture, gave their name to this wliole 
Mediterranean region of the far West, as it seemed in the Jewish 
Geography. All belonged to the Sons of Javan. Their inhabi- 
tants were all of one lineage, all speaking Greek, all having 
their local mythologies interwoven with the old national tradi- 
tions — the stories of their earlier settlements and their later 
colonizations — making each part akin to every other, even aa 
the man of Ohio looks back to the old homestead in Massachu- 
setts, and the life of the prairie mingles with it reminiscences of 
the mountain and sea. 

Such was Greece, historically and geographically. What 
prevented it from becoming a mighty and beneficent power in 
the earth, instead of being, as it really was, a political hell? 
It was the same ovil influence that has troubled us since the 
beginning of our national existence, and which unless removed 
will surely bring upon us the same political doom. 

Read those volumes of Grote that so minutely detail the his- 
tory of Greece from the days of Pericles to those of Alexander. 
What a mournful record of human woe as caused by human 
depravity ! There is many an exquisite digression on the litera- 
ture and philosophy of Hellas — her art, her poetry, her elo- 
quence. In reading these we are apt to forget the awful scenes 
of misery in the midst of which these captivating features had 
their strange existence. But look at the record again, and one 
thing meets us every where. It is war — war — war — unceas- 
ing war, in its most unrelenting forms, — not foreign wars, such 
as many more than compensate for all their evils by the more 
heroic tone they impart to the national and patriotic spirit, but 
bloody dissensions between the inhabitants of petty states lying 
in nearest contiguity — such wars all the more ferocious from 
the fact that they were between the men who spoke the same 
language — all the more destitute of any alleviating courtesies 
by reason of the near factious hatreds in which they had their 
origin. Such was the condition of this miserable land for a 
period of one hundred and fifty years. Such a state of things 
has ever existed between contiguous peoples separated by arti- 
Jicial boundaries, having the same origin, speaking the same 
language, but whose petty sectional pride — all the stronger 
often, in proportion to its pettiness — prevented them from 
having one common political imperium. Witness the never 
ceasing strife between Israel and Judah — between Spaniard and 
Spaniard, in Mexico and South America — between Anglo Saxoa 
in the long wars of England and Scotland. The latter is, per- 
haps, the most striking example of this historical phenomenon, 
2 



10 

unlosa we are about to furnish one still more full of melancholy 
warning to the nations. Britain now taunts us with fi^jhtin"- 
cruelly tor such shadows as unity and nationality. She for^retg 
her own history. Hor centuries of insular war/though hav'ino- 
far less ground in any historic growth, with nought to allege o( 
broken compacts, were all struggles to the same end. True 
she IS but patch work, after all, as compared ta our greater 
historical symmetry; she has grown up, deformed indeed, but 
who shall venture to s,iy that her one great nationalky, with all 
Its ughin'ss, is not betier lor herself, and for the world, than any 
poor petty severeignties of Sa.xon, Scotch and Irish, Welch or 
Cornish, that might now be existing in its place. We may 
thank Gud that truth and nature at last prevailed in erecting a 
beneficent empire out of those miserable Heptarchies, and sec- 
tion.il oligarchies, that had no right to exist as separat<^ sover- 
eignties when they could not supply, either for the inward 
common weal or ouiward defense, those attributes of sovereignty 
Which alone can characterise nations as being truly " powers 
ordahu'd of God.' 

To unhappy Greece there came one moment, most favorable 
of all, for establishing such a beneficent sovereignty. There 
w;is a time when there might have been laid, strong and deep, 
the foundations of a true Hellenic commonwealth tl at might 
have been a blessing in the earth, hastening, by many centuries, 
the period of European culture and civilization. It was durino- 
and just after the Persian war. There was one time before this" 
the only time in her history, when Greece might be said to 
have been all together. It was the period of the Tr.jan cru- 
sade ; but that was a romantic, a heroic, instead of a political 
oneness. The invasion of Xerxes again brought out united (or 
nearly united) Greece, and this was the crisis of their history. 
They let it pass without learning the lesson it taught; or their 
narrow local jealousies were stronger than the clearest teach- 
ings. There were other favorable moments, but so fair an op- 
portunity never came ag;iin. As they receded from Thermoply^. 
every year drove them farther and farther from the idea of 
national unity. Every g.-neration of this absurd state pride 
among those petty powers placed stronger and stronger obsta- 
cles in the w-ay. When it became the standing word, and the 
"one idea ' of the demagogue, all hope was gone, and foreign 
subjugation con id alone tiirminate a state of things with whose 
real horrors no despotism could hold comparison. 

There were men in Greece who saw this, but their efforts to 
remedy it were unavailing. Especially were they found in that 
8tate which so much surpassed all the rest in philosophical and 
literary culture. 'J'he great men of Aihens were ever national, 
even when ciiminally ambitious. Her very deniogogues were 



11 

more national than those of Corinth or Argos. But she had ever 
true men full of the Piinhelletiic feeling, in distinction from the 
factions spouter; even as New England hos her Webster and 
her Everett to put in contrast with the Woods and Vallan- 
digham of our ow^n day. Aihens vi^as charged with ambition; 
she was said to be aiming at imperium and consolidation. This 
was ever the stale cry of the small men of Megara, or the Free 
Traders of Corinth, or the stupid men of Boeotia, or the brutal 
He'ot drivers that talked "state rights," and practiced despotisna 
in Sparta. Athens ivas ambitious, but she was, at the same time, 
truly generous and national. It is true she gloried in (he Attic 
name; and well she might, for with that name is now associated 
our highest thought ot Grecian culture; but dearer still to 
this high souled people was the Hellenic unity. Athens stood 
nearly alone in her Panhellenism ; she was reviled as Massa- 
chusetts is now reviled, and her efforts were unavailing. 
Greece never rose out of that political chaos which was ever in 
such strange contrast wiih her ethnological and geographical 
unity. She never became what one people, of one race, ot one 
language, and embraced by the satne natural geographical bound- 
aries, ever ought to be — one ?iation historically born — one poli- 
tical organization having one common life — each part with its 
acknowledged local rights, but holding as the most sacred of all 
** state rights,'^ the right of each part in every other part, and in 
the whole. 

Instead of this we have an historical picture, the most pain- 
ful, perhaps, that histo'T ever presented. It was war unceasing, 
war everywhere — semper ubique — in every division, and sub- 
division, of this unhapyy land. Nothing comes nearer to that 
horrid representation which Hobbes would give us as the 
natural state of mankind : Bellum, neque hoc simpliciter, sed 
helium om7iium in omnes — ' war, and not that simply, but a war 
of all against all.'''' (Hobbes, De Cive, part I, chap. 1, sec. 11.) 
This, says the philosopher of Malmsbury, is ihe state of na- 
ture ; tins, unless checked by some leviathan pawer, is the ordi- 
nary condition of mankind. This is the rule, he says ; its absence 
is the exception — tempus reliquum PAX vocatur — "the remain- 
ing time is called peace." In Greece, however, this tempus 
reliquum was reduced almost to an infinitessimal. Open Grote'a 
history, any where, especially in those most minute and crowded 
details that fill its last six volumes, and this Bellum horridum, 
this Bellum omnium in omnes, meets you at every page. What 
makes it the more melancholy is, that it was ever professedly 
in search of peace. Irene, O Irene, Goddess fair I 

CsfjivoTaTr; f3a<fiXsia. Ssd 



12 

The Chicago Convention does not clamor more loudly for 
peace, though tar less sincerely, than did the popular orators and 
comedians o( Athens, though they were ever the men who stood 
in the way of peace, or made it but the occasion of a still more 
cruel war. Irene never came. There was no peace to the fi\c- 
tious brawlers o( state sovereignty. Greece was " like a troubled 
sea that cannot rest, whose waters were ever easting up mire 
and foulness." 

It was war for the most of the time in which every section be- 
came involveil — war all the time, of some part, or parts, against 
some other parts. Ever fighting — ever treating — the most solemn 
articles of everlasting amity hardly sealed before broken — truces 
without number — armis'.ices tor months, for years, for ten years, 
for thirty yeans, and then, at it again, in less than thirty days — 
such was this fair land which we are accustomed mainly to think 
of as the abode of literature and the arts. 0, the black cloud of 
profanity that was continually ascending to Heaven! O, the 
broken oaihs, that fdl every page of Grecian history ! May we 
not learn something from this V What faith in treaties, or in any 
confederacies, general or partial, if the great oath bound consti- 
tution of the United States is gone ! For nearly eighty years 
have we been lifting up our hands to Heaven and saying, "so 
help us ihe everliving God," if we fail to keep every jot and 
tittle of this law. Can we ever have a treaty stronger than that, 
more solemn, more secure, than that ? 

And not only wars with each other, or between contending 
sections, but factions in every state — "seditions, privy con- 
spiracies and rebellions" everywhere. Not a day, not a momenfc 
without them, in some devoted city. The lesser tumults were 
the natural results of the greater. Each warring state had its 
party, or factions, in every other. There were Copperheads in 
democratic Athens that were sympathizers with the Spartan 
oligarchy. There were Conservatives, too, so-called, who 
aflected to admire the " high-toned " chivalry of the Lacedemo- 
nians, with all the falsities of their base lying character, whilst '^ 
they despised the enthusiastic, at times turbulent, yet ever 
generous and Greece-loving ilcmos of Athens. And so there 
cauK! to be an Attic party and a .Spartan party in Jioetia, a 
Corinthian party in Argos, a foreign Persian party, and later still 
a ^Ia(:e<lonian party, a Pliilippizing paity, in every })eity district 
that claimed to be a sovereignty in this doonned and distracted 
land. Are we not justified in calling it a political hell? 

The remedy was ever patent, ever at hand, could there have 
been fo\jnd wisdom and patriotism for its application. The few 
very great men of Greece, and e8p«!ci-dly of Athens, were ever 
national. In proportion to their real greatness liad they the 
ranhellenic spirit. But liiey were ever overpowered by the 



13 

m«ch larger number of ordinary great men, or of little great 
men, who found this PanhelUnic scale too large for their 
measurement, and who couhl only hope to figure on the smaller 
stage of these local sovereignties. As with us, so in Greece; 
the truly great were ever national, the demagogue ever factious, 
local, and municipal. But the Websters were few; and the 
Woods and the Vallandighams were numerous and noisy. 

The remedy was in union, not in mere confederacies which 
each party could disrupt at pleasure, and which could, at best, 
be no better than their oft-broken treaties, but a political organ- 
ization, such that the one (ife of the whole should be in every 
part, and the same life of every part pervading the whole, so, 
grown together by the organic power of history, that a hurt ia 
one place should hurt all over, and be felt to the quick in every 
portion of this corporate vitality. History alone would do this; 
but history might have been suffered to have its way. It alone 
could make a nation, and give the inward law; human states- 
men might give the outward form, and co?iventio?i(illy shape it, 
as time, and expediency, and national culture, might demand. 
He "who determines the times before appointed, and the bounds 
of the people's habitations," had done his part for this, in making 
Grecian geography, and Grecian ethnology, and the one Greek, 
language, what they were — peculiar and unique among " the 
powers ordained of God " on earth. All things were ready for a 
political imperium, more intelligent, more beneficent, than any 
that ever rose in the ancient world. There was the great occa- 
sion already mentioned ; there were other occasions when Greece 
might have become such a nation politically, as she already was 
physically, had it not been for an ever thwarting power which 
Ood had left free, that peoples, and nations, might have their 
responsibilities as well as individual men. Outward historical 
circumstances, too, such as the exhaustions of the long Pelopon- 
nessian war, and the evident growth of foreign intrigue as aa 
element in Grecian politics, must have brought it home to the 
intelligence of the most stolid demagogues, that peace, for which 
they were ever clamoring, ever making, ever breaking, could be 
found only in a nationality having all power for inward security 
and outward defense. But this thwarting power was ever there, 
ever starting up at the moment when the good genius of Pan- 
hellenism seemed to have found its opportunity. The seed from 
which it derived its strength had been early sown. It had growa 
with their growth, until it became a diremptive force against 
which no power of cohesion could avail. It was antagonistic, 
not only to national unity, but even to the lower idea of confed- 
erate vjiion. Whilst it prevented all true organic national life, 
it was ever diremptive of any attempts at alliance, partial or 
general, that might wear its semblance, or seem to take it;s place. 



14 

Disorganization, disintegration, was inherent in its very idea. 
It was a centrifugal force ever overcoming any central attraction, 
and ever working on to one result — anarchy, total and remedi- 
less, exc^^pt as stayed, and staye<i alone, by foreign subjugation. 

This fatiil elemt'nt in the Grecian character is represented by 
a single word, sparingly found in the beginning of these annals, 
but growing more frequent as we near the mournful catastro- 
plies — mournful in their disappointments but welcome in their 
beneficent mission — that forever closed the page of this sad 
Grecian history. It is the word attonomiaa (auiojiom'j). It is 
not to be ibund in Homer, nor any thing like it that might be 
adapted to epic verse. It is rare in Herodotus. It becomes 
more frefpient in Thucydides. It meets us on every page of 
that most sad and wearisome history that is found in Xenophon's 
llelienica — .*uch a history as may yet be written of the debris of 
our own great American republic. 

In this last sad period of the Grecian states, no spouter of 
the agora, or stump orator, as we would call him, could make a 
speech without this magic word forming the introduction and 
the peroration, the argument and the appeal, of every discourse. 
It was the watchword of every factionist; it was the plea of 
every lesser slate in its defense, whilst it was the standing 
pretext of every powerful one in its aggression. It was the 
irresistible cant of the times; it entered into all the gabble of 
their wretched diplomacy; if they had had newspapers they 
would have been filled with it from end to end. 

But what did they mean by (lutonomy? The word sounds fair 
enough. It may be rendered Indrpcndence. It is etymologi- 
cally, sdJ-(fovcrnmenl, though having still that same ambiguity 
that lurks in our modern phrase, and which will allow it to have 
two meanings in polar opposition — ^e\{-gorerrnng, or self-o-oy- 
trjied — a ruling or a ruled, a rational or an animal selfishness. 
But it is no question of abstract etytDology. We know well 
what they meant by it. Autonomia, as used by the ancient 
Vallandighams, is precisely synonymous with "state rights." or 
" state sovereignty," in the mouth of the modern. They are 
not merely co-ordinate but parallel throughout. Autonomia 
was "state rights " in its lowest and most mischievous sense ; 
not the right of each portion to have what belongs to it, in the 
general political organization, whether as coming from nature, 
or prescription, or precise enactment; for in that sense each 
ward has its rights as well as each city ; each family has its 
rights, its reserved rights, and each individual ; but it was the 
right of each part to iis own i)etty sovereignty, however injuri- 
ous that sovereignty might be to the whole, or however mis- 
chievous it might b(; to the better rights, and the truer interests, 
of ihe petty portion that claimed it. It was not that great and 



15 

beneficent "state right" which God and nature haci designed 
for each portion, however smaU, of this unique, geographical 
territory, and for whose security a great yielding ot local inde- 
pendence, with its miserable perquisites, would be the cheapest 
price that could be paid. In other words, it was not the right 
of each state in the great nfitionality — the precious right of each 
state, and of the people of each state, in the whole and every 
other, involving the reciprocal right of the whole, and of the 
people of the whole, in every part. It was not the inestimable 
right of inter-citizenship — the right of Phocis in Athens and 
Thebes, and in all the beautiful isles of the iEgean — but the 
right of Phocis to govern her little self, with a loss of all 
the value, and ail the glory, that would come from being a 
member of such a nationality. This latter was a state right too 
transcendental for the ancient demngogue ; and so it is for the 
modern. It cannot be estimated by their arithmetic. The local 
and the petty, and how easy it is to excite men about it ! this 
they can understand. That that which is small in itself be- 
comes still smaller when separated from a whole that might 
have imparted to it some of its own dignity — this is altogether 
beyond them. Phocis and Elis had all their worth as mem- 
bers of Greece. So Illinois has a dignity as a portion of the 
American nation. Separate from that, what a figure is it iikely 
to make in history, even though it might, for a time, preserve 
unwarpt the purely arbitrary straight lines that divide it from 
Indiana and Wisconsin ! It falls far below Portugal and Siam ; 
it is immensely outranked, historically, by the smallest canton 
in Switzerland ; we may well doubt whether in the world's 
knowledge of it as a separate sovereignty, it will ever reach the 
fame of the Mohawks, and of the Six Nations. 

It is this transcending right of each part in the whole and in 
every other part, this precious right of inter-citizenship, as we 
have called it, that is so much overlooked in discussing the 
question of this rebellion, and the relative attitudes of the 
parties. There is an error here, an oversight, on the part of 
the most loyal. Even whilst firmly maintaining that the South 
is wrong, that she has broken the national compact, we still, 
somehow, concede to them a position of self-defense, locally, if 
not politically, — -in re if not in Jure, — in fact if not in right. 
They are fighting pro aris et, Joels, they say, " for their altars and 
their hearths" — for their own homes, their own soil. We con- 
cede this relatively, and to a certain extent, whilst, at the same 
time, saying that they had no business to be thus fighting for 
separation; no one had any thought of harming them, or of 
taking what belonged to them. Now by such appearance 
of selt-defense, even though it be a wrongful one, they get a 
vantage ground in feeling, a sentimental prestige, to which they 



16 



have no right. It is not on our part, a mere claim for the ful- 
fillment of a contract. This is only a part, and the smallest 
part, ot the argument. They have not onlv unlawfully separat- 
ed Irom us, but they have taken what belongs to us as well as 
to themselves. It was our ara? et foci, even as the homes and 
hearths of the :North were theirs. It is on iheir part, not a war 
of sell-defense, but of spoliation. It is the nation that is de- 
fending itselt against them It is the loyal parts that are kept 
out of ilnir own, out of their "state rights," their most valuable 
Btate rights, and they are fighthig to get them back from the 
robbers who have seized them as their lawless prey. The man 
of Massachusetts had a right of citizenship in Virginia, and that 
right he esteems of great value. He never got it^eveu from the 
federal constitution. It is confirmed, indeed, by compact but 
that IS only collateral security. It is older than any such com- 
pact. It gave rise to that compact. The federal constitution 
would never have been, had it not been for this previous inier- 
citizenship constituting this previous nationality. It antedates 
the separation from (ireat Britain. The men who took part in 
that strngole never meant to lose by it so valuable a right as 
this. They never intended that the severance from the distant 
motherland should make us aliens to each other, or shut up by 
themselves, the inhabitants of each petty colonial district, with 
such a vast dimirmtion of the rights, which before came from 
the one common British citizenship. 

If the letter of the constitution is against such a doctrine 
history IS far more. The man of Plymouth has the same ri<rht 
in Virginia as the man of Jamestown. He has the same ritrhUo 
buy lands there, to hold them as resident or non-resident owner, 
to settle on them when he pleases, to reserve them for his child- 
ren, and to make such children, if he pleases, future inhabitants 
of that state. For this he is justified in fighting. For this 
original "state right" he is now fisihting. Every Northern 
soldier now in Virginia has a right to be there even if the neces- 
sity of war did not send them there. Any conditions or modi- 
facations that Virginia might claim to impose on such nghts of 
sod and citizenship, are only by compact, and that too ever with 
this restriction, that no terms can be imposed on persons out of 
her bounds, to prevent them from coming within and exercising 
all such rights that are not equally imposed upon those already 
there. The owners of these franchises have a right to contend, 
even unto blood, against their ever passing under the power of a 
strictly foreign government which may deny or change them as 
It pleases. ° 

What makes the opposing claim the more absurd is the fact 
that so large a proportion of the inhabitants of many of these 
usurping states came from others in tlie North and East. la 



17 

some of them it is not too much to say that a majority are ia 
this very condition. All they have there is from the exercise of 
the same orio^inal " state right" which they now deny. A great 
part of the United States has l)een settled by it, and would have 
remained a wilderness, or a land of poor stragi^ling hordes, with- 
out it. Shall they shut the doors lo all who choose to come 
after them by the same right? Shall Yankees settle Arkansas 
and Louisiana, and then give this as a name of opprobrium^ and 
treat as alien enemies all wiio may see fit to follow them ? Such 
robbery and embezzlement as this they call defending their 
homes, Qghiing pro ar is et focis. If right to one it is right to 
all, and then to what an utter absurdity does this doctrine of 
sovereignty lead us. Kansas is admitted to the Union with 
barely enough inhabitants to send a member to Congress. They 
may itiimediately declare thenjselves a sovereign slate, with all 
povvers inherent in the idea, thus virtually claiming for them- 
selves alone all that vast unsetiled territory. They, too, if such 
a claim were denied, are fighting pro aris el focis. 

Again, there is not only the individual right of each state, and 
of the inhabitants of each state, in every other, but also the 
claim of their common representative, the general government 
of the whole nationality. The United States possesses not only 
political jurisdiction, but the right of soil in all places used for 
forts, arsenals, arniories, shipyards, and other works of the com- 
mon self-defense. Tliey have been paid for, from the common 
treasury. The deeds of sale are on record in the national offices. 
Such was the state of things at Norfolk and Harper's Ferry. 
Virginia seizes both, drives out the lawful occupants, and con- 
verts them to her own rebellious uses. She commits this 
atrocious burglary, like a felon in tiie night, and then, she, too, 
if resisted, is defending her sacred soil ; she asks the world's 
sympathy as one who is fighting p-o aris et- focis ! 

It is astonishing how tliis idea of inter-citizenship is lost sight 
of, though the right of the war is strenuously maintained by us 
on other and tenable grounds. We of the North, it must 
be repeated, are fighting not only justly, as for the enforcement 
of a violated contract, t)ut in actual self-defense to prevent an 
ouster from a long and acknowledged possession. Let us keep 
the great truth steadily before the mind : The right of these states 
171 each other — the right of each stale, and of the people of each 
state, in every other state — their right to all tlie benefits which 
flow from their common nationalities, created by history and 
confirmed by conveution— this is the great and invaluable 
''state right.'"' Every individual holds it, not from any grant or 
purchase made by the state in which he lives — not from any 
concession from the states collectively, or anything representing 
them — not by any reservation made on his behalf — but from 
3 



18 

that original birthright citizenship wliieh made the states, the 
naiion. and the nnion. as all ahke one harmonious indivisible 
work proceedniir froni one and the same working power. "fFe 
the ]Hoph 0/ the United Slates, do ordaifi and estabhsh this Con- 
Btitulion for ..ursrlres and our posterity." Ther^^ spoke this one 
ancient indivisible sovereiirntv in p.^aceful convention ; it is the 
same voice that is now uttered on the battlefield, amidst " con- 
fused noise, and irarments rolled in blood." 

This vital fundamental idea cannot be too often repeated, or 
too strongly enforced. It was this original inter-citizenship that 
made the nation. It was the seed from which it grew; it was 
the law, id.'a, or formal cause, shaping the outer growth, and 
giving it just such form as it in time assumed. It made the 
early congresses; it was the bond and strength of the Revolu- 
tion that severed our new Am^lo-Saxonism from the old , it crave 
rise to the Articles of Conlederation ; it demanded, for its more 
adult vigor, and its just devolopment. the later stronger consli- 
tnt.un, commencing, - JVe (he people^ and so that constitution 
was born as Us legitimate historiral offspring. It has ever since, 
or nearly eighty years, been giving consistency to all the na- 
tional acts It has made history for us; it has made war and 
peace; it has been acknowledged by fnvign nationalities to the 
ignormgof any other cttizensliip, or any oiher nationality in 
this vast territory. Jt has settled the prairie and the wilderness ; 
1 has built great works of national defense, an.i national uiility 
t lat without It never would have been in existence. In all this 
the outward action, the mere mode of doing, may have been 
guided by conventional forms, hut these give it not'its sanction. 
It had life in itself— life coming from an older and a hi-her 
source. '=> 

Ur. Lincoln will long be remembered for his terse declaration 
01 tl.is great truth. "It was the nation that made the Consti- 
tution, and not the Constitution the nation," says he, with a con- 
cise 8,.g icity, worthy of Aristotle. The nation was before the 
constitution, and without the former's pie-existence, the latter 
never would have been. It was the constitution o/ a nation, 
made b^j a nation, andyor a nation. It was not philosophy, nor 
abstract reasoning, perhaps, but that clear common sense for 
which Mr Lincoln is distinguished above other men of our day. 
tlnit sent him at once, and intuitively, to the conclusion. 

i he shallow declaimers at Chicago tell us that the states 
marie the constitution— organically as well as formerly, they 
^'''i l?''^' l^ V"'^ ^^^"'"^ understand the distinction. The parts 
gj... ... ,„ ■ • ,^..,..^, ...A(ii'. the 



,,"■,, •> -, ..-V,... .«.,,. LUC uiMMicuoii. me parts 

made the whole ; and so the cities, towns and people, made the 
states Jo Ignorance like their own this may seem plausible. 
But they forget that ihese states, too, are made of parts, that 
there is no special historical " sacredness " iu their boundin- 



19 

lines, and that when they talk of the states as certain magic 
corporations, separate from the peoph^ of these states, they are 
talking transcendental nonsense, as they would call it if used 
by others, and applied to the far more historical national whole. 

Parts may make a s?««, an aggregate, a mass of masses; but 
they cannot, of themselves, make a true whole. The difference 
between the ideas is fundamental. There is a sense, a high 
sense, in which it may be said, that a true whole is ever before 
its parts, potentially so in nature, and virtually so in time. It 
is not a mere metaphysical abstraction that we are here contend- 
ing for. It is true in physics; it is true in politics. A real 
organic whole must determine its wholeness, and its parts, as 
parts of such a whole. Without this they are not parts of any- 
thing, but mere contiguities. To make them parts in the sense 
of member ship, they need something previous, shaping their re- 
lationship to itself and to each other ; and this we cannot say 
too often, is the work of History — of the great world-move- 
ment, obeying the Higher Intelligence in originating, organizing, 
consummating, the earthly "powers ordained of God." 

The states make the nation. This is true as material cause. 
They are partially the material {ex quo) out of which the natioQ 
is made, just as the mor<'. local subdivisions in the last resort, or 
the individual inhabitants, make the state. But where is the 
formal cause, the effi^cieni cause — for here both these casualties 
unite — in oiher words what draws the parts together? What 
gives them value and relation as parts of such a whole? The 
merest accidents may make a sum or mass of contiguities, but a 
true whole, can only come from an organic life — in other words, 
a previous wholeness. There is a metaphysics belonging to the 
state, and men must not sneer at it, nor trifle with it, if they 
would avoid the most serious, practical consequences. 

The Albany Argus affects to laugh at Mr. Lincoln's "crude 
idea ;" but the editor is as incapable of appreciating its practi- 
cal shrewdness, its irresistible common sense, as he is of under- 
standing its deep philosophy. The national being comes nofc 
from any mere conventional arrangements, claiming either to 
make it, or to unmake it, as thej please. It is " Grod that hath 
made us, and not we ourselves." Generations that are past, 
generations yet to come, have an interest in this work as well 
as the present. This national being is the cause of such con- 
ventionalities, and not their effect. It holds in political philosophy, 
as well as in chemistry. Everywhere in the organic world, 
whether physical or historical, the life, according to its more or 
less complex law, builds up the organization, instead of the 
organization creatmg the life. Very different from this, is a 
mere outside union, that may come together and separate as 
accident determines. The latter has not even the lowest form 
o£ vitality. It lalls below that of the polypus. Cut it into as 



j 20 

many segments as you please, and each one becomes a miserable 
individual polypus capable of being dissected, in the same way, 
_^and 80 on, <td ivjiniium. 

This national life of ours, after going through its embryo 
colonial state, has been deepened by eighty years organic growth. 
We are beginning now to understand how deep it is. The sharp 
pain we feel at the stab which has been given to its vitality, 
shows that we are alive all over. It is the pang of dreaded dis- 
solution, and all this the more terrible because a true state is not 
made 10 die; death is not natural to it. "The state," says 
Cicero, is formed for eternity: Debet enim constituta pic esse 
civita? ut a^terna sit. How graphic as well as how profound ; 
" and so," he proceeds to say, " the state undergoes no ordinary 
natural dissolution like a man. but must be utterly extinguished 
and b'otted out by violence ; it is as if a world had perished 
and fallen into ruin," simile est quodam modo ac si omnis hie 
mundus intereat et concidat.* 

If it were death alone ! But " Hell follows hard after." 
What a heaving Tartarus was Greece, when all hope of a true 
nationality was given up ! From Corcyra to Rhodes, from 
Byzantium to Cyrene, one bloody scene of faction, "sedition, 
privy conspiracy^ and rebellion." 'in the cities, in the isles, in 
the colonies, biinishinents. confiscations, ostracisms, and cruel 
deaths. The most ferocious parties every where, fomented in the 
smaller states by the influence of the larger, and ever kept alive 
in the leading cities by the continual presence of foreign emis- 
saries. With us it would be far more like Satan's kingdom, 
inasmuch as our states are more numerous, relatively more petty, 
and, from the increased powers of modern knowledge, and 
modern invention, capable of greater mutual mischief. 

We are not p-ophesyi ng at randon:>. Here is our old guide 
book. The road is all mapped out, the way surveyed by which 
we march to ruin. All the dire calamities of Greece nviy be 
traced to this word, autonomia. The rapidity of her downward 
course was just in proportion to its frequency. It became in 
time almost the only thing that could b- heard amid the politi- 
cal din of Slates and factions. Infatuated Ilellas! It was the 
last word upon her lips. Siie died repeating autonomia. "Slate 
rights "—State sovereignity" — this was ever the cry until auto- 
nomy, and heteronomy, the Grecian power at home, the Grecian 
power abroad, and all hopes of Grecian nationality, perished 
forever in the battle of Chccroneia. 

Gre-'ce presented the first great proof of a fact of which we 
are now in danger of furnishing another and more terrible 
example to the world. It is the utter impossibility of peace, iu 



Cicoro Repub , Lib. Ill, sec. xxiii. 



21 

a territory made by nature a geographical unity, inhabited by a 
people, or peoples, of one lineage, one language, bound together 
in historical reminiscences, yet divided into petty sovereign states 
too small for any respectable nationalities themselves, and yet 
preventing any beneficent nationality as a whole. No animosi- 
ties have been so fierce as those existing among people thus 
geogra[)hicuny and politically related. No wars with each other 
have been so cruel ; no home factions have been so inceesant, so 
treacherous, and so debasing. The very ties that draw them 
near, only awaken occasions of strife, which would not have 
existed between tribes wholly alien to each other in language 
and religion. 

It is easy now to trace this rapid degeneracy in Greece, and 
to determine its causes. Had Athens been successful in the 
iong Peloponnesian war, it might, perhaps, have been remedied. 
The success of this most national of all the states, might have 
laid the foundation of a Grecian imperium, — not of conquest, 
nor of monarchy, but of united national institutions forming a 
noble commonweuUh in which every thing might have been as 
free as in generous Athens itself; for it was a feature of the 
times then, as it is now, that those states whose domestic insti- 
tutiojis were the most despotic, had ever the most to say of liberty 
and independence. So among ourselves; it was not in Massa- 
chusetts, but in South Carolina and Mississippi, that there arose 
filibustering schemes for tlie d."liverance of enslaved countries, 
and the cry of '* extending the area of freedom." The noble 
Athenian people, on the other hand, ever showed in all their 
history, that their love of individual freedom was ever in har- 
mony with the Panhf llenic passion, and derived its purest inspi- 
ration from it. It was the generous love of all Greece to 
which, ambitious as Athens was of Attic glory, she so oftea 
sacrificed her own prosperity as a sectional part. 

After the melancholy close of the Peloponnesian war, the 
Grecian history becomes a rapidly dissolving view. An abso- 
lute autonomy for every part, or for any part, is discovered to 
be impossible. The Spartan aU'umce, her (fvij.^a-)(_ia as it was 
mildly called, is found to be miOre grievous than any attempt of 
Athens, to establish a common nationality. And now there 
arises a new feature in these political complications. The plea 
of necessity comes in. It presents itself just as often as may be 
demanded for the convenience of the stronger power. Sparta 
had gone to war, for the independence ot the cities. She was 
fighting for all Greece, the battle of "state sovereignty;" so it 
was said then, as it is claimed for Jefferson Davis now. But 
after the sad downfall of Athens, no one of the weaker states 
could be allowed, at pleasure, to depart from the new Confede- 
racy. If any proposition of this kind came from Argos, or from 



22 



the old conquered Meesene, or from any of the "liberated isles," 
as they were called in the L:icedc'emoni;)n cant, she made the 
same ariswer tl at JeHerson Davis gave to the Remonstrants of 
ISorth Carolina. True th.-y were sovereion states— had not 
Sparta fought long and hard fur that— but then, this sovereignty, 
this autonomy, must be properly understood, it must cease to 
be perfect sovereignty sometimes, it must keep itself within 
some proper bounds of expediency. Their departure might 
endang.r the alliance, or produce local inconvenience. It was 
bad to have an en. my. or un independent state that might be- 
come an enemy, between Lacedccmon and Theb-s, or between 
Lacedcemon and Athens. And so the state riijlits of Corinth 
and Megara became just about as valuable, and as tenable, ;i9 
those of N.'w Jers.y would be, lying in her petty sovereignty, 
between New York and Pennsylvania. With these greater 
powers on each side of her, demanding transitus for purposes of 
war or commerce, she will find her own petty legislature a feeble 
defense to her railroad grants, and her precious sovereifrntv a 
very poor exchange for that invaluable "state right," she once 
possessed in an all-protecting nationaliiy. She might protect 
her own oystermen against those of Delaware. She micrht 
exclude her own niggers from her own common schools, jmd 
from her own theological seminaries. These high acts of sove- 
reignty no one might think fit to dispute with her. But she 
must not assume to lay taxes on travel or trade between New 
lork and PhiluJelphia, or forbid the pass^ige of an army, if that 
should be deemed necessary. In all such cases it would soon 
be found that there were other "state rights," or state con- 
veniencies, coming in collision with her sovereisnty, and, of 
course, m the absence of any national regulator, there can be no 
other arbiter than the power of the stronger. The greater this 
national regulator, the less motive for any despotic acts; the 
farther removed from narrow, local jealousies, the more con- 
servative of all true and valuable liuhts. But this she has lest 
and now she mnst make the most of the mighty powers ihat lie 
under '• her great seal." A mere glance at the position of this 
state upon the map (and we might have taken almost any other 
state as well) is enough to put to silence all the famed logic of 
Calhoun, with every argument that ever came from that pesti- 
ent storehouse of mischief, -the Virginia and Kentucky reso- 
lutions." ■' 

Let US look at this matter carefully. If New Jersey always 
po.sse.ssed this ricrht of sovereignty, or if she never surrendered 
It, or has a reserved right to take back what she gave without 
reserve (although this last supposition involves a sheer absurdity) 
then, a fortiori, must she have had it during the revolution. It 
follows, then, that she could have refused confederacy, or could 



23 

have withdrawn from it. She could have made a separate treaty 
with Great Britain, or she could have stood alone. She could 
have declared herself a sovereign power in the enrth, and no 
other state would have had a right to question it. She could 
have forbidden Washington to cross the Delaware on tliat cold 
Christmas night when he took the Hessians. She could have 
told him not to put the tread of his foreign army upon her 
"sacred soil," just as Maryland warned back the regiments of 
Massachusetts when speeding on to the defense of the national 
capital. If not, why not? Where is the defect of the argu- 
ment, if there is any soundness in these state rights premises? 
Would Washington, however, have respected such a prohibi- 
tion ? Would other parties ever have allowed it under any 
plea, whether it had been prescription, or inherent sovereignty, 
or that most sacred thing, the Duke of York's hind patent. 

But this was a case of nece-^sity, one may say. Yes, and it 
has been a case of necessity ever since. It is a case of necessity 
now — as strong at this moment, as it was in the revolution. For 
this necessity is but the oiganic law of which we speak — the 
shaping power of history, giving every thing its place and 
proper sovereignty. It is God that makes nations. " He it ia 
that hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds 
of their habitations." The " powers tliat be are ordained of 
God." We have quoted these texts before, but they can 
bear to be often preached from. Paul is a better authority 
here, than Calhoun, or the Kentucky resolutions, or even the 
patent of the Duke of York. God never made New Jersey to 
be a sovereignty, and that is the best of all reasons why she 
should never assume to be one. Cases of necessity ! why, there 
are every where just such — every where in our history, every 
where in our geography. Attempts at separation put them ia 
a stronger light than ever; they reveal others that never had 
been suspected before. The national agony in the crises of dis- 
location shows, beyond all abstract reasoning, the vile logic, as 
well as the damning sin of secession. 

p]ndless were the negotiations in Greece, arising out of such 
a state of things. The difficulty was felt in every part. Sparta 
contended that the isles should be independent, the small as 
well as the greater. Each should have autonomy. But then 
it would not do, tliat any of them should be on friendly terms 
with Sparta's rival, or furnish naval stations, or commercial ad- 
vantages to her enemies, whether old or new. And so, too, 
Elis must yield some of her sovereignty, that Sparta might have 
more coast room, and an easier access to the Gulf of Corinth. 
The cities of Euboea must have autonomy, but then it is also 
necessary that there should be- a strong Lacedaemonian power 
therC; with certain fortresses as pledges of security, in order to 



24 

counf<^ract the influence of the near lying Attic state. To he 
sure, tiiey must all have autononny, but then nothing must be 
allowed to weaken autonomy's great defender, the Peloponne- 
sian confedtracv. 

This kind of reasoning would have had a just and noble 
aspect had it been employed, as conservritive of the integrity of 
a great Grecian natiotiiilify, and as a defense against a foreign 
power, Persian or I^Iacedoiiian. To preserve unimpaired the 
Hellenic wholeness — to guard against e:^posure of it to foreign 
invasion, or any insidious foreign intervention, through the 
weakening or dejection o( any part, would have been a subliine 
policy worthy of Pericles and Demosthenes. But the little 
great men who preached state rights, in all these petty common- 
wealths could not see tliis. It was too large for their angle of 
vision, just adapted, as it was, to the diminutive and the near. 
They could not reach the height of this great argument^ even 
as Mr, Da'.is himself cannot now see how liis plea of confederate 
inconvenience, as against North Carolina, or tiie danger which 
her departure would occasion to his own j)0vver, cuts up by the 
Toots every argument he has employed for the right of secession. 
If iNorth Carolina cannot be permitted to go in peace (even with 
an acknowledged and solemnly guaranteed right to do so), be- 
cause she would make a chasm between Virginia and Georgia, 
or lose to the Confederacy the security of the Southern coast, 
we thiid^ immediately of the chasms, and deformities, and in- 
securines, that this doctrine of secession brings to a structure far 
more beautiful, far more beneficent, having far more right to live 
as one of the great " powers ordained of God." We cannot let 
you go, says Davis ; he treats it, and rightly too, as something 
more than a matter of conventionaliiy ; we will make war upon 
you, if you dare to think of leaving us — und Gov. Vance seconds 
the cry. Put the war for the nation, that is an atrocious wrong ; 
to she'd blood in defense of this precious national integrity, such a 
proceeding fills our pious peace men with liorror. North Carolina 
would n)uk(i a hiatus in the unnatural Southern nunstrosity ; 
Davis thinks that very bad ; but secession disfigures the fairest 
geographical territory to be found on the globe ; it separates from 
their sources the mouths of mighty rivers; it leaves, for extended 
frontiers, arbitrary lines of most surpassing ugliness, ami which 
nothing in nature or history can render permanent ; worse than 
an inundation of the sea, it cuts off tiiat Gulf corner of our 
land, with all its costly national works, so essential to our secu- 
ritv atiainst a foreign foe, or, what is worse, makes it the sent of 
a d(uiu'stic enemy vvjio may, at any time, expose to that foreign 
foe the most vulnerable and mortal part of our poliifcal organ- 
isu). 'f hougli North Carolina lias an abstract right, doubtless, 
its assertion would be practically very inconvenient, Mr. Davis 



26 

cannot part with the Roanoke and Albermarle sound ; but seces- 
sion may, with impunity, cut off from the United States the 
keys of Florida, the b;iy of Mobile, the mouth of the Missis- 
sippi, with all its countless advantages to the North and West! 
There must be no chasms in the new power; but Ohio (even to 
this the doctrine brings us) has a right to secede, though her 
doing so would leave an impassable hole in the very centre of 
tlie old nationality. It all comes to this; the larger, the more 
beneficent, the more natural, and, because the larger and the 
more natural, therefore the less jealous and selfisli power, is thua 
ever to be watched, and causelessly assailed ; whilst, on the 
other hand, the smaller the subdivisions the more sacred their 
rights, though history proves that such petty sovereignties have 
ever been among the greatest nuisances on earth. 

Such was the reasoning in Greece; such is it now with us, 
when men contend against nature, history and geography, as 
w^ell as the most solemn national compacts. 

We are not contending against true state rights, any 
more than against the rights of families and individuals. 
They need not be opposed to each other or confounded. 
There is a clear and indelible distinction between national 
and municipal rights, between national and municipal govern- 
ment. It exists in the very nature of things and ideas. The 
latter may be safely carried to any extent consistent with its own 
legitimate internal aims, and the safety of that embracing 
whole which gives to the parts all their dignity and value. 
Local government, for local purposes, is no new thing, 
first tried with us. It exists, more or less, iu every nation- 
ality. It is exercised, of necessity, and to some degree, in 
tlie most despotic and consolidated, whilst in such a political 
structure as ours, it forms a predominant, and, if not abused, 
a most salutary feature. It may be defined as a political power 
that ever looks within, unacknowledged by foreign nationali- 
ties and having no relations to them except through an outer 
nationality, of w^hich it forms an organic part. Thus Connecti- 
cut and Ohio have a less dependent social jurisdiction than 
Cornwall or Middlesex, but they are equally unknown to the 
world of sovereign nations. True national government, on the 
other h;ind, may be defined as looking both within and without, 
though the latter is its predominant aspect as it will appear in 
history. It has in charge all foreign relations. Besides this it 
is the only power that can truly regulate intercourse between 
its parts. Both are summed up in this; there is committed to 
it, and of necessity committed- to it, its own'^preservation, and 
the preservation of the parts in the preservation of the whole 
of which they are parts. 
4 



26 

The general idei of national existence being thus stated, the 
question arises, what belongs to it? What specific powers are 
tlie least that can be assigned to it? The answer comes from 
the ver)' idea of an organic political body forming a true sove- 
reignty — that is, according to another of Mr. Lincoln's terse 
definitions, acknowledging no human power al)Ove it on the 
earth. Conventionaliiies may modify these powers; the manner 
of their exercise may be reguhited by a national understanding 
which becomes its constitution for that [)urpose, but they derive 
not tlieir origin from it — their sani^ion from it. They inhere 
in the very idea of nationality itself. In other words, given a 
true nation — whether as made by history or otherwise — and 
these powers are given. Let us attempt to define them. 

A true nation has, first of all, and above all, the power of self- 
preservation, of preserving its own existence according to its or- 
ganic law, which is the theoretical idea or constitution which 
history has given to it. As following directly from this, it has 
the power (acting through this higher orgatiic law, and without 
violating the mode piesented by its conventional constitution), 
of nuiking that conventional constitution, from time to time, 
such as will best contribute to this great end of preserving its 
own national being* which is assumed to be a "power ordained 
of Go<l," beneficial to itss^lf and to t!ie world. From this geat 
fundamental right, flow out all the rest. It has all powers relat- 
ing to foreign intercourse. It has the war-making power, the 
treaty-niiiking power, the foreign comiuerce regulating power. 
It has, in the other aspect, all powers in the ultimate relating 
to the iniernationid intercourse between the parts, and which 
those parts cannot exercise without a confusion and an insecurity 
inconsistent with the common welfare, both of parts and whole. 
Hence it has the intt-rnal revenue power, the post office power, 
or the trust which such a whole alone can well and safely ex- 
ercise (if harmoniously conveying the internal intelligence. It 
has the internal commerce re^ulating power; it has the inter- 
civic power, or the determination of the one common citizenship, 
the same and unchangeablt^ in every part. Again, it has all the 

* Tlii.'* idt'a, so well expressed by Mr. Lincoln, of the nation leins alwve all, and 
older than all, is fandaiueiilal to ail true conservalism. It is rather a curious fact, 
thai iu the lidatinsz ca-'t of the times, this word, conservative, should be assumed 
by men holding a doctrine, tiiat inevitably leads to national disintes^ration. Of all 
dtiti-udivt political heresies, the worst is that which now seeks to pass it^elf under 
this hiinored name. It is still more strange when we think of those to whom thfl 
ap[)ell:iiiou is now given. The word conservative, whatever may be its political 
Eoundiie8s, has hejeiofore been asM ciated with respectaliility, with intelligt-nee, 
with social order, with individual and social morality. Who are now the conser- 
vative masses ? Tiiey are the refuse of our great cities, they are the rioters and 
negro burners of New York, they are men wlu), iu former days, have been known 
as fililiUKiers, favorers of the slave trade, and of every wild adventure opposed as 
Well to the law of nations, as to the laws of the land in which they dwell. 



27 

powers that spring from both these aspects, the foreign and the 
domestic, in their combined relation to the national well-being and 
the national existence. Hence it has the navy creating power, 
the fort and armory building power, the port establishing power, 
the public road making power, so far as there are demanded 
facilities of intercourse and of internal improvements that may 
be necessary to national compactness, national strength, and 
national defense. As embracing all these aims, it has that great 
attribute of nationality ever regarded as inseparable from, and 
involving the idea of sovereignly — the money making power. 
We might mention others, which, although inherent in the idea 
of nationality, have their outer manifestation only in some 
peculiar aspects of modern civilization, such as the establish- 
ment of cost surveys, or expeditions for geographical and scien- 
tific discovery, or the granting of copyrights for the encourage- 
ment of literature, or for any other healthful exercise of the 
human intellectual powers that would only be cramped, if not 
wholly hindered, by the petty jealouses of narrow, local legisla- 
tion, ever the more violent and despotic in proportion to its nar- 
rowness. Add to this all powers necessary for carrying into 
affect the foregoing, and we have the general sum of what be- 
longs to true sovereignty, what a nation must possess from the 
simple fact alone of its being a nation. 

These powers belonged to that great nation, that most pecu- 
liar historical and geographical unity we called the United 
States. They are mostly specified in its written constitution ; 
but this is declaratory rather than originating. The power that 
made that constitution, and might have made it otherwise, must 
have contained all these powers inherently before. They may 
have been wrapped up, undeveloped, unexercised, in some degree 
untiiought of, but they were there. Had that instrument con- 
tained but one clause; had the convention from which it 
derived its outward form and modus operandi made and recorded 
but this one single utterance, and that not an enactment, but a 
declarative statement, that this territory we call the United 
Slates, of right, ought to be, and, in fact, was, a nation among 
the nations of the earth, such declaration would have contained 
in it, and carried with it, every one of these powers; or had it 
added one single organizing clause in lieu of all the others, giv- 
ing to one man, to be chosen every year by the votes of the 
people, the entire national administration, executive, legislative 
and judicial, such a form of government would be indeed most 
defective, but that one man thus representing the national mind 
and the national wilU would have rightly had in himself all these 
prerogatives of peace and war, of commerce, revenue, money, 
national defense, and national existence. 



28 

Some of these powers may lie long in embryo, but they are 
born in time. Some of them were not outwardly developed in 
the first years of our separate history, but tht^y are continued 
in tlie very idea of nationality, and must have found a way to 
assert themselves under any organic form, however defective and 
hindering. Jetlerson asserted, and asserted rigiiily, tiiat even in 
the old articles of confederation, apparently weak as they were, 
lay the power of state coercion. Under our present constitution, 
all such developments have a regular and easy birth. There is 
a regular organic mode through which the constitution, and the 
government under it, may assume any form, and may become 
any thing that the exigencies of the national existence and well- 
being may demand. Through the prescribed modes of consti- 
tuiicmal change, it may become more consolidated, or less con- 
solidated ; if the popular or national mind and national will 
orgMuically acting demand it, it may approach nearer to mon- 
arcliical and aristocratical forms, or it may recede farther from 
lliem ; it may become more democratic, or less democratic ; it may 
allow slavery every v\here,or wholly free itself from slavery; it may 
leave greater powers in tlie states than they now possess, or it 
may in time, an(i proceeding in the regular course of constitutional 
amendment, wholly obliterate politically every state line. 
Through all this, it is the same life, and in fact the same con- 
stitution, for it is acting according to that organic law which 
constitutes national as well as physical identity. It is, too. the 
same national mind and will m all these varied aspec's of its 
manifestation. It is the one national soul linking into a com- 
mon identity, the past, the present, and the future. It is, iu 
short, the one ntidon living on forevermore, and which Cicero so 
im[)ressively says, was not made to die. Hence, there is one 
thing which it cannot do — we mean of course rightfully do. 
It cannot destroy itself. There is no provision in its life for 
death. It may violently commit suicide like a man, but the act 
is unnatural to it ; it is abhorrent to its organism. God, too, 
may destroy it; but such a catastrophe, we may well suppose, 
only happens w-hen it has rendered itself incapable of any 
beneficent function, and become a nuisance upon the earth. 
The danger of our becoming such a nuisance is now, as it 
anciently was in Greece, wholly on the side of this doctrine 
of state rights. It is a very old habii of men "to cry fear, 
where no fear is," but there is nothing for us to apprehend 
in the other direction. The states are not in danger from 
the nation ; they never have been. The local powers wnll 
never want their noisy advocates. But why should there 
be any jealousy between them ? In the harmonious work- 
ing of our beautiful structure, national and municipal 
powers, as we have attempted to define them, (or state 



29 

powers if the name is preferred) are mutually interpenetrating 
in act, though so distinct in idea. When we speak of our 
national government, especially to a foreigner, we generally 
have in mind the articles made in 1787, and commonly called 
" the Constitution of the United States." But (his is a very 
inadequate view of the matter. Our frame of government, as 
one harmonious nationality in its outward and inward work- 
ings, is rather that majestic yet complicated structure which 
combines all that is general, all that is local, all that is national, 
and all that is municipal in one great charter of rights and 
duties; so that should a foreigner ask to read our consitution, 
il would be right to give him the book containing all — the state 
and national constitutions combined in one — as the only com- 
plete description of our organic life. This is our constitution 
with its many chapters and sections — this is our law of national 
being. Each state charter is a part of the great national under- 
standing, and so, on the other hand, the national constitution 
enters into that of each state, as much as though it had been 
recited verbatim in the preamble, or declared to be a part of it 
by an appendix expressly added for that purpose. Here is 
solved what has seemed to some the perplexing problem of state 
and national allegiance. They are one and the same. The 
man who swears to support the constitution of Virginia in all 
its integrity, does, in the same act, and even if he took no other 
oath, swear to maintain the constitution of the United States, 
— the constitution of that whole of which Virginia is a consti- 
tuent part, and without which neither Virginia nor her con- 
stitution would be what they now are. 

Such a nationality has truly existed in this g-^ographical terri- 
tory contained by the Lakes, the Atlantic, the Gulf, and the 
Mississippi. It arose out of the one and entire British sovereign- 
ty. It was announced in the declaration of independence ; it 
was the living principle of the war that followed ; it was 
solemnly confirmed in the treaty of peace made with Great 
Britain in 1783. There were but two parties known in that 
transaction. It was the English treating with the then acknow- 
ledged American sovereignty. It was the old Anglo- Saxonism 
acknowledging the nationality of the new. No one of these 
several sovereign states — so claimed to be — was ever acknow- 
ledged as such by any power on the face of the earth. They 
never had a war, or peace, or commercial alliance, with any 
foreign state. As sovereignties, as nations, they are utterly 
unknown to history. 

The true American sovereignty, on the other hand, has never 
since ceased to be one and entire. It has, at times, been feeble 
indeed, but never shared with any other. If this is not so, then 
we have an anomaly in politics. If we have not been a nation, 



— one nation, — then for the space of ninety years, has there 
been no political sovereignty of any kind within these limits, — 
nothing that could be called by tlie name. In every other por- 
tion o{ the earth — among all olher people however civilized or 
barbarous, there has ever been some one acknowledged supreme 
political power, sovereign to all without ; here, in this fair terri- 
tory of ours, liiere has been no national existence. If the state 
rights doctrine be true, it has, during all this time, and as far as 
foreign powers are concerned, been a blank political waste. For 
nearly a century, we have been speaking, and acting, and living 
a lie. 

But even this lie, bad as all lies are, is better than the reality 
that would have been without it. If a delu.sitju, it has done 
something to keep ihe peace. We shudder at the thought of 
thirty or more such sovereignties as New Jersey, filled with such 
politicians as our state rights men generally hre, being crowded 
vviihin these hounds. To say nothing of any bloody horrors, 
such as never ceased in unhap[)y Greece, what a loss of all dig- 
nity, of all political value, what a siidsing of all that is high 
and heroic in national reminiscences ! Let us try and imagine 
such states acting their little mischievous part on the theater of 
history. New Jersey sending ambassadors to France or Russia ; 
the high and mighty state of North Carolina entering into articles 
of everlasting amity, or chivalrously engaging in war, with Great 
Britain ! What farces would tiiese be! And then their politi- 
cal annals, what sublime reading that would be! Events taking 
place in a very small territory may, indeed, have an everlasting 
pase in history, but then they must be connected with some- 
thing that is intrinsically great, something wide reaching in its 
influence upon the destinies of mankind. The little Greek 
states, beside their connection with the old heroic deeds of the 
Homeric and Anti-Persian Panhellenism, had something of a 
history of their own, going far back, some of them, into a re- 
mote anti(|uity; but there is noihing historical in New Jersey 
and North Carolina, except as connecting them with some greater 
historical whole. Guilford and Monmouth are not their battle 
fields, any more than Gettysburg belongs to Pennsylvania. 
Over all of them had we better draw the veil of everlasting ob- 
livion, than have them remain as monuments of our deep dishonor 
when the state rights doctrine shall have wrought its ruin in our 
land. 

The lamentable error in Greece was the fictions prevention of 
any sucdi nationality ever being formed. With u>; it is more than 
an error. The great, the ineffable crime in our land is the seek- 
ing to destroy such nationality after it had existed full and 
strong for eighty years, after generations had been born under 
it, receiving its rights and privileges as a [trecious inheritance 



31 

from their fathers, and transmitting them as the most invaluable 
legacy to their children. Nor is this latter fact of least import- 
ance in our argument. It is higher and stronger than any con- 
ventionality. No paper constitution has such a sanction as this 
silent course of nature bringing out the unborn, and placing 
them, at the very origin of their earthly existence, in the stream 
of liistoric influences, and under the educating [)Ower of settled 
institutions. It is the seal that God sets upon the virork. 
It connects the present with the past and the future. Gene- 
rations thus born under law, are ever, by their very law of 
continuity, transforming the conventional cement into organic 
growth, and converting what might seem, outwardly, the work 
of man into a true historic '• power ordained of God." 

But let us not lose sight of Greece, that most instructive mir- 
ror that God !.as given us for our perfect illumination. We see 
reflected there our own picture in its minutest lights and shades. 
Her past projects itself into our future, and from it there is no 
great difliculty in telling what will be the next step, if we fol- 
low on the downward course ot her sad history. Along with 
this cry of autonomy, and often in practical inconsistency with it, 
there arose in Greece the doctrine of "the balance of power." 
We know the wars that this has occasioned in modern Europe. 
But the adjustment of those larger and natural sovereignties 
has a beneht counterbalancing the inevitable evils. When the 
attempt is to a[)ply it between petty sovereignties arbitrarily 
divided, and without any ethnological ground to warrant it — too 
small for any beneficent ends, and having, therefore, no right to 
exist — it becomes evil and evil only. There is no power so 
despotic as well as so mischievous as petty power. A rabble 
of such contemptible nationalities, placed in near contiguity, 
where they may be ever snarling at, and biting each other ! It is 
a den of vipers ; and any act of God in history, whether through 
foreign subjugation, or otherwise, that closes its hissing mouth is 
to be desired and prayed for by every true friend of humanity. 

Along with this never settled balance of power doctrine, there 
came into use a peculiar political vocabulary. Such a slate was 
to be attacked for Atticizing ; another was cliarged with Licon- 
izing; all mutually reproached each other with Mediizing, and 
tliis was the truest of all. In the assertion of their wretched 
autonomy, Sparta, Ttiebes, Athens, Argos, the Isles, the Colo- 
nies, had each their deputies at the foreign Persian court 
intriguing against each other, and all secretly courting this once 
vanquished power, to the disadvantage of their rivals. Ifc 
entered into the spirit and proceedings of their home factions as 
they existed in each state. The i-aipsiai, the secret party meet- 
ings, the political clubs or caucuses, had often with them the 
secret foreign emissary to encourage and report. The fact is 



32 

repeatedly alluded to by the later historians, and well may it 
remind us of some feature that are beizinnin? to appear in our 
own photograph. We are startled, sometimes, on looking at 
some exhumed relic of ancient art. How like ourselves, and 
the work of our own times? The Persian legate in secret 
conclave with a faction at Corimh or Sparta, plotting the 
overthrow of some rival party at home, or in a neighboring 
state. Such a mere passing allusion in Xenophon, or Tliuy- 
cidides, IS like an old inscription dug out of some mouldering 
ruin. Clear away the rust of age, bring out the letters in their 
distinctness, and what do we see? It is the veritable r. cord of 
an event which has already taken place among us, and which 
bids fair, if Chicago triumphs, to be oftrn repeated in our history. 
It IS the British embassador privately meeting with a political 
club m New York, or visited, as he states, by the leaders of a 
political faction, who come to consult with him about foreign 
intervention, and the time for it that would be most favorable for 
their party interests. the unchan.neablen^ss of human nature? 
History is a repeating cycle. " The thing that has be^n is that 
which shall be, and there is no new thing under the sun." 

This was the Greece that had vanquished the millions of 
Xerxes, and rescued all Ionia from the Oriental sway. She is 
now suffering Ionia to go back to the yoke, and the Isles to fall 
under the Persian dominions, just as we, in our impotence, see 
Mexico under a German Emperor, and Peru suffering from the 
insults of Spain. We cannot help ourselves for men who once 
sat in an American senate are now waiting for recognition at the 
court of Bonnparte, and New York merchants are closeted with 
Lord Lyons in preparing planks for the platform of a politic;d 
convention. O Hellas, how rapid thy deireneracy ! This deep 
degradation was not long after 10,000 Greeks had defiantly 
traversed the length and breadth of the Persian Empire. There 
were yet old men who had heard their fathers tell of Salamis, as 
we now hear of Bunker Hill and Yorktown ; and now here are 
the Greeks waiting in the ante-chamber of the Persian monarch, 
and presenting the same melancholy humiliating sj.ectaele, that 
we shall exhibit when fiction and "state rights" shall have re- 
duced us to the same condition of political imbecility. 

It is to be noted as an important feature in her history, that 
though clamoring for autonomy, Greece still had her con'federa- 
cies. She was ever making confederacies, and dissolving them 
as fast as made. It was the struggle of nature and history 
against utter anarchy. But these confederacies had no national 
bond, no geographical unity, no common historical reminiscences 
to k.'ep them together. They did not last long enough to make 
any history of their own. Tliey were formed 'on every pretext 
that faction could throw up. It was now Sparta and Thebes 



33 

and Corinth, against Athens. Again it was Sparta and Corinth, 
against Thebes. In these continual upturnings we find even 
Athens and Sparta leagued together against BcBotia. It was 
nothing strange that such unnatural antagonisms should, now 
and then, give occasion to equally strange alliances. There 
is a capricious pleasure, sometimes, in showing how those who 
have fought fiercely with each other, can tight, all the harder for 
it, against those whom political convulsions have made, for the 
time, their common foes. Thus Massachusetts and South Caro- 
lina may some day be (bund fighting together against Pennsyl- 
vania and Virginia There were times when Athens became 
nearly isolated. Demagogues in other states assailed her very 
much as New England is now assailed. But slie had an intrin- 
sic superiority that made it impossible she should ever be 
despised. Her high culture, her literature, her philosophy, gave 
her a proud position, even when her political power was most 
weakened. Even the dull Boeotian could not help feeling that 
there was something very respectable in the Attic alliance. 

That, in such a condition of things the smaller and weaker 
states must suffer every kind of injustice, we need not history to 
inform us. They were situated just as Delaware will be, when 
the full control of her bay and river is wanted for her strong 
neighbor Pennsylvania, and there is no higher power to prevent 
the latter from doing just as she pleases. Phocis and Ellis, 
Megara and Sikyon, the smaller cities of Thessaly, the scattered 
and helpless Isles, the distant colonies, were ever at the mercy 
of^he larger states, and endangered by every new and shifting 
confederacy. They still kept crying out for autonomy, and 
it was conceded to them in appearance, but nothing could 
be more unreal. It was ever made tlie occasion of the most 
despotic proceedings on the part of the larger states in their con- 
tinual contentions with each other. Thebes was getting too 
strong, and so Sparta was seized with a sudden passion for the 
independence of the Theban dependencies. Thebes must grant 
autonomy to the lesser cities which, with her, fbr(ned a surt of 
BcEotian confederacy as a counterpoise to the Peloponnesian. 
Sparta had a right to demand this ; for was she not the cham- 
pion of Grecian independence? When it was demanded of her 
in like manner, to give autonomy to certain cities of Elis and 
Arcadia, which she had taken under her protection, she had 
ready immediately the answer of Jefferson Davis, and Gov. Vance, 
to the Remonstrants of North Carolina. It was not convenient. 
It would make chasms in her boundaries ; it would weaken her 
frontier. Sparta must be strong — for was she not the great 
upholder of autonomy, the bulwark of state rights, — and, there- 
fore, in her case, the principle must yield, or seem to yield, to 
a wise expediency. 
5 



34 

We have dwelt upon the picture minutely and at length, from 
a strong desire to impress it vividly on the minds of the reiKh-rs. 
The truth cannot be exceeded ; but the saddest thing of all is 
the thought, how, amid all this, the old national glory was ob- 
gcun.'d, and the proudest remembrances of Grecian history lost 
their liold upon xhv mind. And this was no merely romantic 
or unreal injury. Every n ition has its heroic age. It is a bene- 
ficent provision of God in history. Such lu'roio agt; is the foun- 
tain ol its p ilitical life. Wii^^n this dries up, that life withers, 
and decri'pitudo, premature decre[>iuide, raoidly ensue-'. Most 
strikingly was it so in Greece. As autonomy ring's upon the ear 
we hear less and less of the old Ilumeric days — less and less of 
Marathon, and Salamis, and Thermop) Ue, and Pauea. Have 
we not sotne similar experience here? The 3var8 are brief, but 
they are already making a rapid diilerence in the national fe^-l- 
ing. In a large portion of our country the Fourth of July is no 
longer celebrated. Washingon's birth day is beginning to bring 
up only the saildest associations of idea-!. It is becoming pain- 
ful to read of Bunknr Hill and Saratoga. We lay the book 
aside with tiie mournful hope, that God wiil bring again the 
time when the feeling of the heroic shall not be lost in the heavy 
depression that ni^w aceompnnies its perusal. A nation loses 
immense'y when it loses this. We. of all people, can. least 
atibrd it ; for our lieroic age, though bright, was brief. Once 
gone from its due place in our memories, and it is gone forever. 
We have no hisiorical materials out of which to construct again 
its reality or its semblance. 

This utter loss of the heroic, as connected with th-^ old Hel- 
lenic reminiscences, is especially seen in wh;(t is called the Peace 
of Antalcidas, made in the year 3S7 before Christ. It was some 
time belore the closing citastrophes, but we select it as the 
period of deepest degradation, making sure what must sooner or 
later come. There was a spasmodic revival of the old glory in 
the days of Pelopidas and Epaminondas, but it was a flickering 
and transient flame. Thebes had her brief turn after Alliens 
and Spaita, but i-.o^liing could stay the degeneracy, or heal the 
mortal vpouiid that had been given to the true Grecian independ- 
ence in the base transaction on which \ve are dwelling. There 
died the last hope of any Hellenic nationality. They got a 
peace at last, but what a peace ! It was, indeed, soon to be 
broken like the numbt-rless truces and armistices they had 
made before; the old compound fracture was past healing; but 
transient as was this peace of Antalcidas, this is not the main 
thing in it to which we would call attention. It was rather the 
painlul picture it presents of Grecian dc^gradation. In this 
respect, it could sink no lower. The subsequent subjug.itions 



35 

of Philip and the Romans, could add nothing to this deep 
dishonor. 

The influence of Persia in Grecian politics had long been 
felt — an influence arising not from her own power, but from 
Grecian divisions, from their foolish autonomy, their insane cry 
of state rights. This, however, is the first instance in which 
that foreign power, that ancient enemy, openly and diplomati- 
cally appears as the dictator in Grecian aflkirs, under the pre- 
tence of protecting the independence of tlie Gi'-^cian states. 
The Oriental despot assumes the position of defender of Greece 
against herself. Her endles^i and bloody wars shocked his no- 
tions of humanity ; he is horror struck at the fra'rici ial strife. 
The parallel that all this presents with some t'oings in modern 
times, is certainly a very curious one. Thueydides in his iv 
Book, sec. 50. gives us quite a graphic account of a very singu- 
lar correspondence between Sparta and the Persian king. The 
letters had been intercepted by Aristides, the captain of an 
Athenian ship of war. They w^re transferred, says the his- 
torian, from the Assyrian character, and in them Arta- 
xerxes is found oompluining of ihe Lacedaimonians that he 
he cannot tell what they mean (oj yiyvCuf-KSiv o ti Bo-oXovraiy Their 
plain Laconic style, in which they so prided themselves, had 
suddenly become tortuous and diplomatic. It was the same dif- 
ficulty that Napoleon finds in determining what the South means 
to do with Slavery. But the obscurity v/as not greater than the 
inconsistency. The Spartan chivalry had, in former days, been 
the greatest reviK rs of the Persian power. It had b^^en their 
political capital, just as in our times, abuse of En^jland and the 
charge of British influence was ever the standing party weapon 
of our Southern democracy. British gold for the Federalists and 
the Whigs, Peisiati gold for the Athenians ; the comparison runs 
on all fours. So Sparta, in her political diplomacy, was ever 
claiming to be the peculiar champion of the ancient Monroe 
Doctrine. She was ever accusing the other Grecian states of 
Mediizing. Especially was this charge made against Athens, 
the most truly Grecian and naiional of them all. But what do 
we now behold ? It is an appearance as fuH of instruction as it 
is of strange historic interest. When the traveler looks back 
from a certain hill in Germany, he sees painted on his far dis- 
tant rear horizon, a giant figure that seems to move when 
he moves, and to stand still when he stops to gaze upon it. 
It is caused by a peculiar state of the atmosphere. A simi- 
lar phenomenon is sometimes brought out in the mirage 
of time. We pause on some mount of his history and look 
back. Far off" tiiere beckons to us the passionless ghost of 
antiquity. Is it the Spectre of the Brocken that is mocking us 
with such fantastic imitations of our own acts? Is it our own 



36 

shadow thrown back two thousand years over the intervening 
waste of tiine ? It is ourselves we see, our own inseparable 
image deriding ns with an unmistakable fac simile of our own 
folly ;ind crinx-. Ti;ere we stand ; Mason and Slidell at London 
and Paris — Antalcidas at th--' Court ot Susa — far absent in the 
ilcsh. but, in the timeless sp/ri(,i\\\ ihe same, here we find Sparta 
soliciting intervention fr<im Artaxerx-s, promising in return, not 
cotton, tor that was a thing unknown in those days, nor the 
em;incip;ition of H'e Helots, but the annexation to Persia of 
Ionia and the Isles. We next see the Spartan ambassador side 
by side with the Persian envoy at the Sardis conference, and 
seconding him in the dictation of the humiliating terms. Read 
the account of it as given in Xenophnn's Hellenics. 'It was a 
treaty ready made," says the historian, " brought down by the 
Satrap Tiribazus, along with Antalcidas, the Spartan legate ; it 
was read aloud by the Persian, heard wi:h silence and submis- 
sion by the Grecian (deputies, after he had called their special 
attention to the royal seal," — ewiJiigaj rk fSa(ft>.i-^g crr,p,=ra — as 
though in this significant act lay the special degradation of the 
whole aft'iir. How curt this intervening despot's stylo ! How 
clearly does he show his consciousness that it is not the men of 
Marathon to whom he is now talking. So brief is the roya] 
document that we give it in full,^" Artaxerxes, the king, thinks 
it right that the Greek cities in Asia should be his, and also of 
the isles Clazomenae and Cyprus. It is his will that the other 
Greciim cities, both small and great, should have autonomy. 
Whichever party does not accept the jycace, I will make war 
against them with my Grecian allies, both by sea and land, with 
ships and money." (Signed and sealed, Artaxerxes.) 

What a tableau was here ! Tiribazus showing them tlic king's 
seal, Antalcidas, the Spartan deputy, affirmir)-g its auihenticity, 
the otliers standing meekly by and receiving — autonomy. Their 
precious "state rights !" They have them now at the hands of 
the Persiati monarch. 

Our view of the humiliating scene is concluded when we call 
to mind what autonomy really was under the Spartan rule, with 
its Dekarchies, or consular boards, its Harmosts, or agents to keep 
the peace, in all the states that force or diplomacy brnu^jht 
under her influence. Ii is just such autonomy as will be found 
in a Southern Confederacy, shouhl Tennessee or Arkansas ven- 
ture to assert their real independence. It is ju>t .'•uch " state 
rights," and just such "free speech," as will be allowed to 
]\Iassachusetts, should a slaveholding Oligarchy, protected by 
France and Kngland, be allowed again to esiablish itself in our 
land. 

"This base and unholy act" (altf^^pov xa/ avoViov ?p7ov), as Plato 
calls it in the Menexenus, was resolutely opposed by the Athe- 



37 

nians. How bitter it was for tliem is seen in the mournful Ora- 
tion of Isocrates.* It sounds like a wailing dirge over the last 
hope of true Grecian independence, and of a true Panhellenic 
Commonwealth ; but the bitterest thing of all was the dictato- 
rial style, and the insulting interference, of the foreign power 
brought in by the very people who, in former days, had most 
rnviled it, and who chiimed then to be the peculiar guardians of 
Grecian rights. Alas! says this polished orator, "have we come 
to this?" l^ap'Bapcg xv^s-ai r^^; EXXwJo.c, xai cp6Xa^ r/jg sJpjju.aj sIti'd — 
*'The foreigner cares for Helhn, he is the keeper of its peace !" 
So Plutarch says, " It was a p-aoe, if we may call it such, tha 
brought with it more infamy (and more calamity too he might 
have saifi) than the most disastrous war"t These wailings of 
antiquity — how like a groan ihi^y sound, over something that is 
forever lost — such a groan as we may imagine to proceed from 
the graves of Gettysburg, when it is found that this sharp con- 
flict has been all in vain — when Northern, Southern, and West- 
ern confederacies shall be ever forming, ever dissolving as soon 
as formed, yet each of tiiem, in th' ir brief season, having their 
begging envoys at the courts of Europe, and vieing with each 
other in the degree of servility they can afford as the price of 
any petty advantage from foreign powers. 

The Peace of Antalcidas failed, of course, like all the rest; 
but from that time the course of Greece was ever downward, 
with the bright and brief exception to which we have alluded. 
The heroism of Epainiaondas could not avert the coming catas- 
trophe ; the eloquence 'of Demosthenes could not stay it. 
Foreign subjugation became inevitable ; and we acquiesce in 
the verdict whi'h is forced upon us, when convinced that no 
Macedonian or Roman despotism could ever exceed the horrors 
that, for more than a century, had forn)ed the chief picture in 
Grecian history. 

Greece failed, or rather, those noble spirits failed, who had 
been all along so ardently striving for a Grecian nationality. 
The failure there, was in ever becoming a nation. Sliall we 
make the greater, the far more disastrous, and far more criminal 
failure, of suffering our nationality to be destroyed after eighty 
years of such strong and proud existence ? Tlie great loss, in 
its political estimate, surpasses our arithmetic. But, there is 
another aspect in which the dire calamity comes still nearer to 
us, and the pain of imagining it becomes still more pungent. 
Shall this etibrt fail ? How, then, could we bear the thought 
of the piecious sacrifice that has been already made to prevent 
so unspeakable a catastrophe? Success may soothe our mourn- 
ing, thongh so hard to bear in any event. But 0, the d^^ad and 

* Isocrates, Panegyrica, page 184 
•j- Plutarch. Vitce, Agesilaus, 23. 



38 

^one. if we have no such hope to comfort us! A " nation 
(Irovviied in tears ! " The expression has been often used rh^'- 
torically in funeral (>rations, but here is no hyperbole. The 
language uf tlu' Prophet alone can picture it. " A great mourn- 
ing in Jerusalem, as the mourning of Hadadrimmcm in the 
vallfv of ]\Iegitl(lo, each fauiily apart; tiie family of the house 
of David, the liniiily of the house of Nathan, the fimily of the 
house of Levi ; each family apart, and tlK ir wives apart.'* 
Each private sorrow hut a minuter picture of the universal grief. 
In every ntighborhood, iu almost every family, some dead. All 
over our land, lliere are millions who are sufFeiing the same 
sharp grief. The loss of these precious lives, viewed only in 
thenjselves, how beyond all estimate ! But shall it all be in 
vain? Tiai is the still more trying thought. Shall it be all in 
vain, either through the force of opi n rebel 'ion, or the still viler 
treason vf those who favor rebels in the North? Ah, there is 
the pang unutterable. 

But we must not quail from looking even this issue in the 
face, not for discouragement, but to obtain a stimulus for 
greater and more heroic effort. Viewing it in even this, 
which seems its most painful aspect, we may ask ourselves, 
might tiiere not have been something still worse th^m this? Yes, 
something still wofs*^ tiuvn this with all its harrowing features. 
We say it with a full and feeling conviction of the miseries of 
the [last three years. Great would be the evil of secession tri- 
um[)hant, and terminating in natiotud disintegration ; greater 
still the evil of a false nationality, an artificial confederacy with 
the poison of seression still preserved and entering into its very 
bones and marrow. But there is one thing worse than all ; it is 
that sucl» disastrous change should have come? with no effort to 
prevent it, no arm lifted to stay it, not a blow struck, not a life 
lost in defense of a nationality so glorious — or once thought so 
glorious — as ours. What an unutterably sad picture that would 
have been; how indescribably mournful the page in history — 
the United States dis;ippearing from tlie map of nat'ons — each 
one of us going our sever.il ways, — occupied, if tiiat could be 
in such a state of things, with our farms, our merchandise, or 
our books, — and the nation dying, dying undefended, unmourned, 
with no protest raised against an act so horrible, so unnattiral, so 
utterly uidike any thing that liad ever before taken place in the 
history of n:ian ! Sad as is the thouglit of Chancellorville and 
Chickiimauga, this would have been saddi-st of all. No war, 
however unsuccessful, could have compared with it for disaster, 
not only to the political iiopes and political welfare, but to the 
highest moral inteiests of maidiind. Who would believe in 
government, who would regard it is as a divine institution, or as 
having any thing .livine about it, if, with all its oaths and sane- 



39 

tions, it could be so trampled under foot by one class of men, or 
so indifferently given up, or so efisily postponed to the most con- 
temptible wordly interests, by another? Yes — we say it with 
firmest conviction — f .r 

Better to have fongtit and failed, 
Tlian never to have fouglit at all. 

Sucb would be the unanimous decision of posterity looking at 
the truth from that distance which ever shows its unclouded 
face, and fair proportions. We are not afraid for our Christian 
name in thus writing. We are no advocates for war. We 
believe that every step consistent with right atid the higher good 
of mankind should be ever taken to avoid it. But the reader 
will see that the qutstion is not here concerning war for some 
point of national honor, and waged for that purpose against a 
foreign foe. It may well be doubted whether the Christian 
demand for peace should be ever violated for such a cause; but 
here is war tor national defense, yea more, for national existence. 
It is a vt^ar for law, for order, for the obligation of solemn com- 
pacts, for the sanctity of oaths, for religion, for morality, for 
social quiet, for all that secures the transmission of healthy politi- 
cal institutions from age to age, for all that is venerable in history, 
for all " that is lovely, pure, peaceable, and of good report " 
among men, for all that truly makes government a "power 
ordained of God." 

A war for a cause like this cannot be wnolly a fauure, even 
though unsuccessful at the time. As a protest alone it would 
have an immense value for the future. It contains in it the 
seeds of good for ages to come. It carries with it the germ of 
some natwn yet to be born again— after a century c^f anarchy, 
it may be— yet still preserving its slumbering vitality in the 
remembrance of such resistance. 

Again siiall spriig visit those mouldering graves. 
There shall ci-me a resurrection morn. The heroic idea shall stjl 
live through this long winter night of death, until "the ram la 
over and gone, the flowers again appear in the land," and the 
new nation germinates afresh from those mourned battlefields 
of what was once regarded as a failing and disastrous war. 

It is not a failure even though it be but to carry down the 
stream of time, and embalm in history, the remembrance of the 
heroic And here we draw again upon that storehouse of 
parallel incident, the Grecian oratory, and the Grecian history. 
We find the very case we have presented in that well known 
passage from the oration of Demosthenes on the Crown, still 
better known from what is said about it by the great critio 
Lonc^inus. He cites it as a remarkable example of the sublime, 



40 



U8 like a thunderbolt, scattering every other thonght. and making 
us g.-.ze alone upon the v,sion con.ained in the^W^Cs wo f 
It occurs soon after another striking passage, in wh c th s 
most h.yal orator, who h,,d so long iJbo'red to Arouse a Pan ! 

the noble etioits of his Attic country n.en-" What one of the 
lellen.an. knoweth not, what one of the Barbarians knovveth 
m,l, that in he Thehan wars, and in those former wars when the 
Laced,.n.on,answere strong, and in the still older wasVith 

t w-ou ill. r ^'«^'.-''''''^'y'/'n<3 with many thanks besides, 

1 woudlavebeen given to A-hens to t:.ke what she pleased 
and to hold what she pleased, ,f she had only allowed anoXr 
and a foreign power, to have the rule in Greece ; but th s to the 
Athens of those days could never seem patriotic, it was never 
her na, ure ; it was ne.^M- to be thought of, never to be e du ed " 
of ov^fT'T'"' ""T- T^y Pri'--«tory ,0 that impassioned bur t 
of oyal feeling uhich marks the close of that splendid oration 
and lor which the world has ever yielded to it the uncoiiteted 
palm of eloquence. It should be borne in mind, tha? it was 
just after some of the most disastrous military defets Tlat 
v.le copperhead, ^Eschines, had been taunting him, and m'. ,>ar v 
with the.r failures, and the hopelessness of .U he r ef^Jr s t^J 
niamtam t e integrity of Greece. Chicago could not have beea 
more insultingly tnumphaiH, or more bitter. How glorious the 
reply! what a hgiit it sheds amid.t all the surroun ?da t 
ness what a ch.eenng beam ,t sends down to us in our own day 
of g oom, and alter the lapse of more than two thousand v3 

of dfv rntv " bk"^^ ^"''"■"^'" ^'^^^ ^"^g^""^' " ^y t''e brladth 
Of divinty,— like one, 9o.o\^wo^ y,vo>,,,5 rapt with the smrit 

of prophecy he spake aloud that oath-like appeal to the^ld 
heroes of Helh.s, o .s,,.,, ,:, ^.,,,,^ .^^^ U my cout^- 

cZZt^C\Zt '' t'''"' '', '"'^ "^^ '^^^'- I^ -."^t be it 
I swear by those who died in the battle front of Marathon by 

n tit: f[:ht.f s^f '"'-^ '"^r^T ^^ ^^^- ^^'- ----^ 

in the see hght at Sa amis, and at Arfemisium— bv the many 
alike r ^sclibeT '^ r ^'r /r''? sepulchres,_to all of wS 
or .1 V ; f^'^'V ''''"' '^'^'^''''' ^^'^y ^^" »" ^lie hour of victory 
too oT ; " T^ *"''''' f ^^'"'^^^^^ "^ S'^^"""« burial. And just ^ 
00, fo tha which was the only work for brave men to do that 

submiited. Ihose heroic deaths were not in vain, even thou-h 

Without a struggle. Its great idea would lie embalmed in the 



LoDginus, De Sublimitate, I ami XVI 



41 

world's memory, giving fragrance to patriotism and to loyalty, 
through all time. It would stand as a protest against the wrong, 
a never dying appeal in favor of the right, all the more valuable 
from the precious blood by which it was confirmed, all the moro 
prophetic of future success in some similar effort, where the 
cause of Grecian disaster should stand out as a warning beacoa 
to republics in the remote latter days of the world. 

The blood of the martyrs is not shed in vain. Such were 
the men of Marathon, such were tfie men of Gettysburg, evea 
should there be a longer or a shorter eclipse of the American na- 
tionality. But such an event we must not anticipate. Our 
near approach to a known catastrophe is the best warning 
against it, and so may be the best means of escaping a similar 
fate. Paradox as it may seem, yet time, in its winding course, 
sometimes brings us strikingly near the remote past. In the 
late funeral services at Gettysburg, we seem to be living over 
again some of the most solemn scenes in Grecian history. Iq 
the oration of Mr. Everett on that occasion, we have some- 
thing that may well compare with the choicest parts of 
Athenian oratory.* But it is still very different with us 
from what it was with the Athenians, when Demosthenes ut- 
tered this subHme apostroplie to the dead. We have had no 
such crushing defeats, no such disasters as then seemed to take 
away all hope. We know that we are strong, if domestic 
treachery, with its lying names of conservatism, state rights and 
state sovereignty, do not undermine our strength. Our foreign 
foes, though mighty, are far aw.iy, and our inward traitors are 
every day lessening their power to harm, by revealing more and 
more of their turpitude. 

Above all, we know ihat we are in the right, and though God 
may sutler the right, at times, to be overborne — though he may 
have great issues, and great prob.itions, which we may not 
clearly understand, whereby one right is postponed to another, 
yet the history of the world cannot be all an unending experi- 
Qient. " God hath not made all men in vain." There must be 

* Mr Everett may well be called the American Isocrates. He has all the polish 
of that Grecian orator, whilst excelling him in ccgent clparness of statement and 
reasoning. His funeral oration at Gettysburg, will ever be regarded as a most 
choice and classic production, ranking with that of Pericles on a similar memorable 
occasion, to which Mr. Everett so efl'ectively alludes. But there was one sentence 
uttered in the presence of those graves that will become household words, ever 
coming up as oft as Gettysburg is mentioned. It was one of the unstudied sayings 
of Abraham Lincoln, in his brief introduction lo the orator of the day. Their 
pathos and their power are enhanced by the unconscious greatness and simplicity 
of their utterance. '* The world icill little hied, nor long remember what we SAY 
here, but it can ^tever forget uhat th'.y lUlJ here." In the simple contrast lies the 
moral sublime of the diction and the thought. Notwithstanding the speakers de- 
preciation of his own language, so modest and unaffected, the saying will not be 
forgotten, for it is inseparably linked with the grandeur of the deeds. 
6 



42 

Bomelhing filial and settloJ ; there must be some experiments 
that terminate in success, though many seeming failures, in the 
worhl's long nnil painful history, may have been preparatory to 
it. \VV will hope on, that it will be so with this nationalitV of 
ours, so wonderfully born, so wonderfully preserved, so marked 
in all its historical growth by providential interpositions, and 
having st.'cli high evidence — equal to, may wh not say, surpass- 
ing that of any other nation — that it was truly '* a power or- 
dained of God." 

It is because we believe it to be His work, that we think it 
will not die — at least a death so young and premature. Man 
did not make it; man, therefore has no right to unmake it, not 
even all the men of the nation combined. And here tomes up 
a question to which we have briefly alluded before, and which 
the reader will pardon us for dwelling upon again. Horacp 
Greeley is a most sagacious, and — however strange the asser- 
tion may seem to some — a most conservative politician. There 
is, however, a doctrine of his to which we can never subscribe, 
and which we regret his ever putting f )rth. In the beginning 
of our national contest, when we were all looking on wi'h be- 
wildering amazem'mt, and " wondering whereto this thing would 
tend," he see-nu'd to maintain the right of peaceable separation, 
in a general convention called for thnt purpose, and by proceed- 
ings under constitutional f >rms. We cannot assent. The nation, 
acting in accordance with its organic law, can undergo almost 
any modification, or change of outward form, or luward state, 
short of an absolute seli-negation ; it can riglit^y do alnio-t 
everything else than a voluntary act of sdf-destruction. We 
trace three stages of pow r, but nowhere do we find any right 
or ground lor such proceeding. In the Jiist place, there is no 
such power given in the present written constitution. It con- 
tains provisions for amendment, but none for dissolution. It ex- 
cludes it; for amending ijiiplies the continuance of the constitu- 
tion amended, and of the nation, or body politic, of which it is 
the consti'.ution. In the sccmd place, the men of the conveo- 
tioii which formally enacted that constitution had no right to 
put in such a provision: for they were delegated there for no 
such purpose. They were sent to make a form of givernmeut 
for a nation, a constitution as full or as brief, as rigid or as flexi- 
ble, as finislied or as amendatory, as the national exigencies 
might seem to require ; but they wj-re not authorized to destroy 
the nation itself, or to make any provision tor such destruction. 
Neither, in the tlilrd jducc, could ilie people who thus delegated 
them, by any majority, or by any unanimity even, have given 
them this power. It was not theirs to give. The men of that 
generation alone, however unanimou.s, were not the nation. 
They were only a part of the natiou, or the then flowing form 



43 

of an unchanging, and an undying whole. Past generations had 
siill an interest ; future generations a still deeper interest. The 
dead of Bunker Hill and Saratoga have a protest here ; this was 
not tliat for which they fought and died. The dead of Ge'tys- 
burg look forth from their graves; they, too, have a voice in the 
question whether they shall he graves of glory or dishonor. 
The unborn are demanding their inheritance. The men of 17S7 
did not make the nation, and they had no right, as we have no 
right, to unmake it. It was not theirs; it is not ours, except to 
preserve and transmit, not to destroy or suffer to be destroyed. 
God made the nation; it cnnnot be said too often. He made it to 
live on, a representative of the spiritual and the timeless, amid the 
flowing generations. He ordained it as a power in the earth, and 
He alone has the right to destroy it when it ceases to fullfil the 
great end of its being. We received it as a trust; we owe it to God, 
and to the world, and to the unborn, that it should continue thus to 
live on. Any repudiation of this higher bond is of the same base 
nature with that lesser repudiation which has been practiced by 
the men who would now cancel our national existence. If it be 
called revolution, we can only briefly answer here, that that can 
never be an abstract or unconditional right. It is, as we are 
aware, a vexed question, but, to our mind, all its ditBculties are 
at once settled by the sniiple thought that revolution never can 
be a right, except when, and where, it becomes a duty — a most 
solemn and imperative duty. Let the Davis rebellion be judged 
by this, and there is no need ol any other argument. 

God may destroy the nation ; but God is placable ; " there is 
forgiveness with him that he may be feared." We will " cover 
ourselves with sackcloth ; it may be that he will turn away from 
his fierce anger, that we perish not" Humbly we will confess 
our manifold sins, our foolish boasting, our vile party corrup- 
tion, our excessive commercial worldliness, and last, though not 
least, our heaven-de'ying oppression of the poor and the weak, 
our harsh outlawing of those •' little ones," whose lowly care 
God had made our high probation, and around whom we ought 
to have thrown the safeguard of law in proportion to th.ir expo- 
sure and their weakness. National repentance may avert his 
wrath, even for that sin of sins, the impious and unchristian 
Dred Scott decision. 

But what is the political crime of the North ? Let men cry 
out flmaticism as much as they please ; they can make no other 
record than this. According to our best intelligence, and our 
clearest conscience — in both of which attributes of humanity 
w^e claim, at least, an equality with our opponents either North 
or South — we voted in a Presidential election. We were pre- 
pared to abide its issue, if defeated, or its reversal in the consti- 
tutional way. This is our case — the whole of it. When the 



44 

sun went down on the first Tuesday in November, ISGO, a new 
political issue arose over all the land. All precedinir ones, such 
as banks, taritis, annexations, etc., had been temporary, suiierfi- 
cial, endurable if wrongly decided, or capable of easy remedy. 
This was a vital issue ; the life of the nation was involved. All 
other issues were buried until this was decided, and so decided 
as never to come up again. 

How often had we boastingly said to the world— look here— 
see this great people— how zealously we contend at the polls, 
what a sudden calm of order and conservatism immediately fol- 
lows the verdict of the ballot-box. Shall that proud assertion 
ever be made again? Tiiis was the new issue of that eventful 
day. From morn till night had the little papers, emblems of our 
national trust in humanity, been lalling, like snow flakes, thick 
and fast, over all the wide extent of our land. Even as they lay 
silent, and yet uncounted in the ballot-boxes, this issue of issues 
arose. It was as though during that solemn hour every man 
who had voted, had personally promised every other man— yea 
had sworn it wiih a solemn oath— that whatever that verdict 
should be. It should have its legitimate political ettect, and 

Its fair political trial, until in like manner solemnly reversed 

so help him God. Thus virtually pledged himself— 6^ the very 
act 0/ ro//«ir— every man to every man, every candidate to every 
other candidate, every Republican to every Democrat, and every 
Democrat to every Kepublican. As we walked together to the 
polls, this was the spiritual word that day ascending— this was 
Its sound to ears opened to the perception of spiritual thin^rs. 
The man of the losing party was more bound in honor, as well 
as in conscience, that this all superseding issue should be sacredly 
maintained. He was more bound in true yolicy, even as he would 
want the same security in some future issue of a similar kind. 

Ballots or bullets. They who now aflect to talk in depreca- 
tion of war, and in fluor of the "peaceful ballot" as takiiK-- its 
place, are talking absurdly, if not treasonably. " Coercion is 
opposed to the genius of our institutions; democrats repudiate 
It ; our remedy is the peaceful ballot box." Such was the fool- 
ish gabble uttered by one on taking the chair of the late Demo- 
cratic state convention of New York. The ballot box ! it lies 
m rums and trampled under foot. They who fight for it may, 
with some consistency, maintain its sacredness. They who 
give all the aid they can to its violators, and yet can prate of 
'' the peaceful ballot," have nothing but the excuse of utter sto- 
lidity to shield them from the consciousness of the most detest- 
able hypocrisy. 

For nearly four years now has this new and vital issue been 
on trial. How shall it be, not only decided, but decided in such 
a way as to leave no wound in the national integrity ? There 



46 

can be but one answer. It must be done by putting the coun- 
try, as near as possible, in the very condition demanded by the 
contemned and broken election of 18G0. By that vote Abraham 
Lincoln should have been for four years the unresisted President 
of the wJiole United Slates, just as Mr. Pierce and Mr. ]3uchanan 
had been before him. Those years have nearly gone into the 
past, with all their bloody record of rebellion. He has not had 
his constitutional right. He has been violently kept out of all 
executive jurisdiction in all the southern portion of the United 
States, except where the national arms have carried the consti- 
tution with them For the assertion of this jurisdiction, which 
he was solemnly sworn to maintain, he has had lavished upon 
him, and by men at tlie North, every vile epithet of infamy. In 
view of this, the remedy that shall fully restore this national 
integrity becomes self-evident. The election of a President, 
other than Mr. Lincoln, and in condemnation of him, although 
it might be, with more or less sincerity, on the avowed grcund 
of rebel coercion, would be an exceedingly defective cure. Such 
a position of rebel coercion, even if it were sincere, could not be 
maintained in the face of the most essential concession it would 
involve to the revolting states ; since the least compromise con- 
tains the whole essence of Secession. There is but one cure for 
this deadly stab that can be permanent and complete. There is 
but one proceeding that can send the nation down to posterity 
staunch and sound — scarred indeed, exhausted and weary, but 
in all the integrity of its constitutional or organic health. It is 
the re-election of Abraham Linccdn to the post he has not been 
permitted to occupy. Not for his sake, but for all that is most 
vital and sacred to the nation, is it right — Deo volente — that he 
should be four years unresisted President of these United States. 
Tliere are other reasons good and substantial. One of the 
candidates now before us, is recommended on the score of his 
Christianity, of which, however, we know nothing more than 
the asserted fact of profession, whilst we do know that he stands 
on a double platform, — a position, to say the least, not favorable 
to moral integrity. The other is only a plain, honest man, with 
nothing else to present to the hero-maker than that homely, 
unpretending virtue, whose very ordinary excellence consists, 
mainly, in tlie obsei-vance of an oath, and the earnest eflbrt to 
fulfil! a trust. In his moral poverty he has but one platform, and 
that is, to preserve the nation at the cost of whatever may stand 
in its way. The first is lauded as a statesman. So his friends 
proclaim him, though his statesmanship has no more evidence 
than his piety. The other has passed through the most trying 
ordeal that ever tested the strength of man ; but there he stands, 
yet holding firm the helm, with the vessel still steady in the 
storm, still heading to its port, though often seeming about to 



46 

foundor ill the fiercest tempest by which ship was ever yet 
assailed. The pilot who preceded him had abandoned the hehn, 
and given npali as lost ; the crew had mutinied ; tlie vessel was 
basely deserted by the greater part of the officers then in places 
of trust, and who are now the very men most clamorous in 
demanding another Captain — the very men who say that they 
alone can be intrusted with the vessel's safety. Treason was 
every where. With God's help the ship is righted, though not 
yet wholly past the rocks. Shall the old mutinous and treach- 
erous crew be restored to power? Sh dl any man be trusted, 
whatever-claims he may have personally, who is known to be 
iht'ir choice, and who cannot succeed without tlieir help ? 

To droi> all metaphor, and treat the subject in tiie most prac- 
tical manner, we must look at the position men occupy ; we 
must study their affinities. It is our surest, as well as our easi- 
est way. Of abstract policy, of genuine integrity, of pure 
Christianity, of exalted statesmanship, it is not easy judging. 
It is well for us that we have other tests, more prompt in their 
applications, whilst perfectly reliable in their decisions. We 
may here draw again u]>on that full storehouse of antiquity. 
When men were raised to office in Athens whose success was 
hailed in Lacedaemon, the downfall of Athens was near; when 
men acquired power in the states of Greece whose elevation 
gave joy at the court of Philip, Greece was already past hope. 
Is any one at a loss how he shall vote in such a contest as this, 
let him be guided by the instincts of the enemy. They will 
not deceive him. The law of contraries gives, sometimes, the 
surest index to our bewildered reasoning. It says, take not that 
road. To act upon such grounds is practical wisdom, because 
error reveals itself more readily than truth : evil is more appa- 
rent than good. The affinities of the false and the bad are thus 
a surer guide, sometimes, than the best arguments of an abstract 
kind that can be employed on the side of truth. They have all 
the certainly of chemical tests. Like comes to like — or, at 
least, alike in liking each other — even as mercury combines with 
tin, or chlorine runs to the embraces of hydrogen. The vile have 
an almost infallible way of hiowing ihcir 7nan, however seem- 
ingly opposite to themselves the character he may assume. 
Nothing is more keen than the instinct of malevolence, nothing 
more unerring than the unconscious logic of evil when exercised 
in the choice of its agents, however stupid and blind it may be 
in respect to the real nature of the ends it wouUi seek to attain. 

Here, then, is a field for the application of these tests so fur- 
nished to U8 by tlie common sense. There is no chance to be 
mistaken ; a few simple questions settle the whole matter. 
Which candidate is sure to receive the vote of every warmest 
sym[)aLhizer with rebellion in our land ? On whose side will be 



47 

found the men who rejoice — and their name is legion — at defeats 
received by our armies? For whose success will tkcy feel deep- 
est interest who have no tears for our gallant dead, and who 
stigmatize the war in which they fell as fanatical, false and in- 
glorious ? Where is all that is heroic, thrilling, soul-elevating 
in this giant contest, and on which side is there a total absence 
of even the semblance of any such qiuilities? Whose Chris- 
tianity and statesmanship can most surely count upon the hea- 
viest majorities in the vilest dens of vice to be found in our 
cities? Who will receive the most votes from the drinking 
cellar, the brothels, the gambling saloon ? Whose conservatism 
will find most lavor with such conservative characters as fili- 
busters, and rioters, and negro burners ? Which side confidently 
expects to get the most votes in those regions of our land where 
the densest ignorance most abounds? Whicli has most to say 
of " fanatical priests" intermeddling in politics? Whose elec- 
tion will give joy in Richmond? Whose triumph will cause 
mourning to every liberty-loving republican of Europe, whilst 
it sends a thrill of joy — more vivid than that which M icedonia 
felt at the fall of Demosthenes — to the soul of every liberty- 
hating partisan of monarchy? Patriot, as you style yourself — 
Christians, of every name — if these questions can be ansv/ered 
in but one way — and you most surely know what tluit is — how 
dare you vote on a side which will bring you in association with 
every one of the characters here described ? 

Never was issue more clearly joined. It is not so much the 
candidates as the influences that support them, and which will 
be made controlling by the election of the one or the other. 
Whatever be the integrity or intelligence of General McClellan 
hipiself ; whatever be the intelligence or integrity of some who 
intend to vote for him, there can be no doubt of the predomi- 
nant interests that are arrayed in his support, and which will 
demand recognition in case of his success. All that is most 
hostile to our true nationality is there. All the most extreme 
advocates of the mischievous doctrine of state sovereignty are 
there. Every one among us who is a member of a secret society 
in aid of southern treason is there. Every man who. whilst 
ringing the false charges of sectionalism against the North, is 
engaged in the vile work — at this fearful day the inefflibly vile 
work — of exciting a new sectional hatred between the East and 
the West — every such man is there. All who are distinguished 
for the most demoniac feeling toward a crushed and outlawed 
race, are there. They are all there. Christian and patriot, we 
siy again, can you vote with them? It would seem as though 
there were but one fitting style of speech that could be used at 
the bare thought of such association. It is the language of the 
Patriarch—" my Soul come not thou into their secret, unto 
their conveiitions, mine Honor, be not thi|ii united." 



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